FORWARD IN REVERSE
by G.E Waldo
Summary: A story of being and time. Not really a time travel thing. Not sure what the hell it is though . Summary: Wilson's present and possible past and House's present and Wilson-altered past. An exploration of what is/was/could-be & could-have-been. Pre-sla
1. Chapter 1

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TV Shows » House, M.D. » **FORWARD IN REVERSE Part I**

B s : A A A

Author: GeeLady

Fiction Rated: M - English - Angst/Romance - Reviews: 23 - Published: 02-03-08 - Updated: 02-17-08

id:4050510

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Forward In Reverse.

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A story of being and time. (Not really a time travel thing. Not sure what the hell it is though).

Summary: Wilson's present and possible past and House's present and Wilson-altered past. An exploration of what is/was/could-be & could-have-been. Pre-slash, slash, humor, angst, character death - but not REALLY!

Pairing: Wilson/House/Younger House.

Rated: M, NC-17, Mature, Adult.

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THIS ISN'T ABOUT MY CAR.

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"What do you mean I need a new alternator?" Wilson didn't mean to snarl at his mechanic, but his luxury automobile was earning it's moniker once more by siphoning another wad of money from his checking account. "Mumbling Moses, Leslie - you just installed a new alternator six months ago."

Wilson listened to the defensive, tinny voice on his cellular and sighed. "Fine. Do it. I can't stand the damn buses." He continued to mutter to himself as he ended the call. The phone didn't even give him the satisfaction of closing on Leslie's ear with a stern "click". Pushing a green button the size of a Tic-Tac did nothing to soothe his insulted pocket book.

Wilson saw his Route Eleven coming up the street. The damn driver was early again and Wilson was still a whole parking lot away!! He jogged, his briefcase slapping against his thigh and this overcoat billowing out behind him like a toupe flag.

Wilson tried to ignore the other thing bugging him. That thing being a who. That who being a jerk. That jerk being an ass. That ass bearing a name. That name...Wilson felt fresh enamel grinding off his teeth in an expensive shower of fine shavings as he thought over Gregory House's sneering, dismissive comments that afternoon. Just a while back. Fifteen minutes ago actually...

"House, I need you to-"

"-Can't." House didn't even look up from his computer.

Wilson stopped short, sentence unfinished, X-Ray still in its envelope, needed consult un-mentioned, humorous bachelor banter un-shared. "Um.."

"Busy." House said in such a way as to mean Get the hell out.

Wilson stole a glance at the computer screen. A naked women was licking chocolate chip ice-cream off another woman's tanned belly. "Oh, yes. Sorry to have interrupted your...anatomy lesson." Wilson pulled out the X-Ray. "My patient..."

House switched off his computer screen, grabbed his cane and limp-marched into the empty conference room. Wilson, accustomed to House's abrupt exit's, kept up with him by an animal instinct he had not possessed in times Pre-Housian. Wilson himself was often surprised by his own adaptability to the changing moods of the furious and furtive Gregory Horribilis.

Wilson, patience tossing it's gentle lasso through the air, settled over House by the coffee machine. The pot was empty. House slammed it down and began a forage for possible foodstuffs in the lower cupboards. He came up with a box of very stale crackers and began to munch.

"Those are nearly a year old." Wilson told him.

House shoved three into his mouth and chewed with his mouth open, sending little crumbs spilling over Wilson's X-Ray, now divested of it's paper cover. "Very mature as usual." Wilson shook them off. "What's with you tonight?"

House finished the crackers, handed the box to Wilson, and marched back to his office.

Wilson dropped the empty in the trash. Forgetting about the consult for a minute, "House!"

Reaching his desk again, House did not sit down but turned duped eyes on Wilson. "YOU" A finger on the end of his long arm pointed accusingly, "volunteered me to Cuddy to assist her with a lecture on Diagnostics to a group of idiots!"

Wilson swallowed with a gurgle. Oh, right, THAT thing. "First of all, they may be rich but they're not idiots. They're a group of the wealthiest philanthropists in North America and they're coming here, in case you missed it, to hear YOU do what you do best: Tell everyone how smart you are but not in those exact words because for goodness sake, we wouldn't want them to think you had some kind of swollen ego."

"I,.." House leaned into Wilson, almost nose to nose, "do NOT give lectures. I hate standing. I hate lectures. I hate people. I hate you!"

"And second of all," Wilson continued, ignoring House's rude comments, "I never volunteered you. I suggested she might have a department head tour them a little, wine and dine them, perhaps explain to them some of the break-through's we make here. And, suggesting to Cuddy that YOU might want to assist would probably have got me fired. She made the choice."

"Well, she asked me."

"Then she's ill and I'd better give her a physical. Either that or she's lost her mind and has begun to think you're capable of being nice."

"If I WANT to be nice, I can be."

"I believe you, House. Hundreds of millions wouldn't, but I do."

"On the other hand if I DON'T want to be nice-"

"-You know, Cuddy may have a point. You shouldn't get to bow out anytime a situation might be uncomfortable because of your handicap. Being able to say "I'm a cripple." does not grant you license to ignore responsibilities or treat everyone around you like jerks."

"How about just the ones who are? I already gave a lecture."

"One. And that was three years ago. You talked about a farmer and his bad dog, claimed ownership of Carmen Electra and, oh, insulted the whole audience individually and as a group. You're skills as a public speaker are many and nefarious."

"Ever since Tritter, she uses threats to make me do things. She doesn't want a diagnostician, she wants an entertainer. To do tricks like a poodle - come see the handicapped Doctor."

Wilson had not considered that aspect. Of course House would feel on display. Stared at. He could almost hear the hushed whispers of the audience as they discussed what might have happened to their speaker's leg (those who didn't already know). What happened to him? Can he feel anything? Is the leg fake? Was it a car accident? I heard he was hit by a golf club. Do you think it hurts?

A crippled doctor was a rare spectacle. An anomaly. Something interesting to look at while their asses fell asleep. House was a legend, a mystery, a reclusive unknown. House was Different.

To House, lecturing was being on display. A humiliation.

House was still sputtering, "And..."

Wilson crossed his arms, staring at his friend with a little less anger as House wound down from his tirade. But the man was in a career field with certain responsibilities. The leg couldn't always absolve him of them. "And what House? Cuddy kept your ass out of jail. She saved you from destroying what you call your life." Wilson regretted the last few words and hoped House would bleep over them.

House grit his teeth. "And...my leg hurts." He eased his bones carefully down onto his padded chair.

Wilson studied him to see if it was real or a sympathy grab. House was sweating. It was real. "Look, House. I know your leg's been worse lately. Maybe we can adjust the med's, get an MRI, see what's going on inside..."

"In fact," He continued as though Wilson had not spoken a kind word, "she didn't ask me, she told me. Gave me no choice but to say yes. So never mind, you've helped enough." He turned back to the chocolate chip tongue on naked belly dance.

Wilson sighed, his energy drained. Typical of House, via yelling insults, to finally come around (using the longest possible route), to the real reason he was upset. The damn leg. Almost always the leg told what he could and could not do. It was master and commander.

It was the whip and chains.

And, even more typically, just when you heard House's words so painfully spoken from gritted teeth and saw his face so contorted from pain that you were finally stoked to the eyeballs in sympathy, he would hook his cane around your ankles and pull your willing, naive feet out from under you.

Wilson, spent from five minutes in the man's presence, the wind and the will knocked out of his body, hung his arms and backed off. "Fine. Screw it." He said more bitterly than he felt. House was acting like a huge jerk, but his leg was doing most of the talking. Wilson left the room, tossing him a cool "Maybe I'll see you tomorrow, House."

But on his way out the door, he stole a look back at House slumped in his chair, chin in hand, face a blank. Which was more disturbing than if he had appeared sad.

It was the lecture. Unless it was his fellowships laughing at his clever quips, the man hated an audience.

He was Cuddy's precious resource. House, the one-legged circus act.

Her performing monkey.

XX

I FORGOT: I NEED A REASON TO GIVE A CRAP.

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Outside, under the blue sky, Wilson scolded himself. Of course that's not how Cuddy really saw House. He was her best doctor but, Wilson figured, sometimes Cuddy couldn't help but flaunt her valuable resource. House was, if nothing else, a draw. Potential contributors, the Hospital's name in the paper. Maybe even her name somewhere in the same paragraph as House's. Not that she was a star-fucker or fame junkie, but she was the Administrator and as such needed all the leverage she could muster to keep Plainsborough front and center research-wise. And for that it had to be well funded. It was how she could have a top Oncology Department, a Diagnostics Department (the only one of its kind nation-wide), run by a genius with, not one or two, but four fellowships to assist. Plus a hand full of other specialty departments few hospitals could afford to front.

The damn lecture. He wished he hadn't suggested it at all. Cuddy was delighted at the idea and jumped right into organizing it, though Wilson knew House would probably never agree.

But the man had been doing so much better, lately, in the human department. House had been seen speaking to colleagues he really didn't know that well. Chatting with his fellowships without a case on the board. Without a specific reason. Without being insulting! Talking to patients, even talking to the patients during his clinic hours. To someone who didn't know House, such things would appear as usual. To those that knew House and his history, such a change, however subtle, was a huge leap.

But give a lecture was still more than House could endure. Maybe to a group of med students who were there for the information and the benefit of his experience. They'd stare at the leg and wonder, too, but they would know enough not to whisper or ask him anything about it for fear of being booted out. They knew the value of his legendary medical skills.

Not so a room full of rich, bored contributors. They had nothing to lose and Cuddy everything to gain by raising their substantial collective asses in the air so she could kiss them heartily.

Contributors wouldn't care a cling-on about the medicine or the methods House or anyone else used in any department at Plainsborough. What they wanted was to be entertained for an afternoon. To reach the end of the show and exchange backslaps with their peers about their mutual generosities and doesn't my conscience look nice on this sleeve? Oh, and that poor doctor with the limp. Though I hear he's a real prick.

They did not want to see the medicine but the medicine man. House had that reputation about him. He was the genius. The man who would figure it out when no one else could. A scientific sorcerer, the Shaman of diagnostics. That alone brought the curious out of the wormwood. It was the number one reason House had received over a hundred resume's for the three open spots on his team.

But to outsiders, House was perceived as even more than a Shaman. House was the cripple. The recluse. The unfathomable grouch. That sort of name drew out the morbidly curious.

The gawkers.

They came to see not just the brilliant doctor but the reclusive, illusive, little known about, rumpled, be-grumpled, genius, crippled doctor who had his name in the paper and not always bathed in respectable light.

They loved hating him. Not as much as he hated them, but House was good gossip. House was news. He was the Princeton Grinch.

So they came. They came just the same.

For all her good intentions, Wilson didn't think Cuddy had considered the impact on House of what she had asked. The humiliation alone might undo all the social progress House had made. If Cuddy went through with the lecture, insisting House do it, he would comply. He would stand up there and do his job: be medically insightful and brilliant. And they'd stare at him delighted with pity. He would be degraded and hated all at once. House would become nothing in their week but a stimulating dose of What-a-crying-shame.

Because Wilson had come to learn that, if it was House, most people were short-sighted idiots who only looked and listened. Then, without knowing anything substantial about him, dismissed him as a cranky misanthropic jerk. Brilliant but a jerk. Few had ever taken the time to search pass the scowl and the cane.

Wilson pulled up just short of his bus stop. Maybe he should go back and talk to him. Not that House would apologize. As close to that goal as the man usually got without being tackled and hog-tied was to offer a beer or tell a joke.

Wilson had almost turned around when his bus pulled up. If he ran, he might make it. He'd call House later than evening. Wilson broke into a sprint.

Then he was on the ground, sprawled on his backside, hands scraped raw from a vain attempt to soften the fall. And his nose felt wet.

Wilson wiped at it with the back on his right hand. Blood smeared knuckles indicated his fall had not been without cause. Actually the bridge of his nose hurt like hell. Broken maybe.

A shadow above him caused him to look up, shielding his eyes from the bright sunshine to gain a better look, Wilson saw the cause had been an old man dressed in a heavy leather black coat that swept the ground, its worn hem dirty and tattered from in-numerable years doing just that. His face was framed by as lot of wild grey hair, uncombed for centuries. A thickly calloused hand reached down to him. "Sorry, young fella. You were running."

Wilson frowned. Was he being blamed for his own bloody nose? Wilson accepted the hand, however, and let himself be hefted to his feet. His briefcase lay nearby, gaping, it's many papers scattering to the breeze. "Damn!" Holding a tissue to his nose, Wilson scurried around, gathering up the wayward notes. He might still be able to catch his bus.

"You must slow down." The old guy commented.

Wilson nodded, dismissal written all over his face. He looked over at the bus stop in time to see the bus pulling away. "Dammit!! There goes my bus."

"The number eight?" Old guy asked, pointing with a massive arm. A laborer's arms. Farmer's maybe.

Wilson looked again. Indeed, it was the number Eight bus. Not his. "Guess I made a mistake." Wilson said. Lots of those today.

"Yes, Doctor." The old guy was staring at Wilson who shivered under the warm summer sun.

"Have we met? I'm pretty sure I don't know you." Wilson said.

The old farmer walked over. Stood close. Real close. "But wouldn't it be interesting if I knew YOU?"

Wilson thought it was maybe a come on, or the guy was just crazy. The puffy and lined grey eyes were fixed on him, unblinking.

Wilson did a mental double-take as the old man elaborated. "Consider how different you're life might be if you could go back. Alter what was and repair what is. Change the meant to be into the want to be; If you were a different you or I a younger me?"

Time to go. The guy was nuts. "Yeah. Well, next time I'm about to run into someone, I'll try and look back in time to swerve."

The farmer nodded and smiled. Wilson realised he was being humored and, annoyed now, stepped around the fellow.

Except the old man snatched at his right hand, holding it firmly between his own two. The guy had gorilla strength. Wilson could see the squeezed tips of his fingers go red and then white as the old guy spoke. "I don't believe," he said, "that he would be as contrary as you suppose."

Wilson stared, forgetting all about his crushed fingers. "Excuse me." It was half question-half request.

The man released his hand and pleasantly smiled before walking away.

Wilson walked to his bus bench and sat down with an explosive sigh. Wiped at his nose. The blood was clotting and it did not feel broken anymore.

Weird day.

XX

BEAUTY OFTEN SEDUCES US ON THE ROAD TO TRUTH.

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No bus came. Wilson looked at his watch. His nose felt wet again. Damn!

At the sink of Plainsborough's main floor public washroom, he wiped his nose clean and searched for the hand-dryer. He grabbed paper towels from the dispenser instead. Cuddy really had to get the painters in here - orange stalls and yellow paint? - retro ugly.

Walking across the park once more on the way to his bus stop, a group of runners passed him, ten or twelve young men, all in various states of perspiration. One brushed a little too close. Wilson could smell his sweat and swore he could hear the beat of his heart. Realized it was his own heart. He felt faint and found himself once again sitting on his ass, though this time it didn't hurt as much because at least it had come down on grass.

A jogger trailing the others saw and stopped to assist. "You okay, Doc'?"

Wilson looked up, having to shade his eyes from the light. A tall silhouette framed by bright sun looked down. "Huh?"

"Are you okay?"

The timber in the voice...reminded him of... a sweaty hand grabbed his and pulled him to his feet. "Uh, yeah, I think..." Wilson brushed off his pants and finally looked directly at his good Samaritan. Stared. Shook his eyes so the image would scatter and coalesce back into something less confusing."...so."

The other man nodded and turned to rejoin his companions. But Wilson was still holding his hand. It would not obey his order to let go.

"Wait." Wilson, sun to his right now and not as bright, so not interfering with vision. No photo sun-ghosts blocking out the features.

The younger man, trying to free his own hand and not succeeding, stared suspiciously. With clipped impatience, "Something wrong?" He asked.

Wilson gathered the shape of the face, the cheekbones, the clean jaw, the fresh skin...

The eyes. As blue as a glacier-fed lake. Younger, though. Newer. No lines to give away the age or the troubles. The hair, a little different.

His mind tried to sort the pieces out and put them together in some semblance of logic but it was no good. So, of course, he couldn't be...him. But, "Are you by any chance related to-?" Wilson started to ask but the other interrupted rudely.

"No relations here. No family. Only child and right now, a busy one. See ya'."

Wilson's hand caught up to his brain and let go of the other's. He watched his Samaritan jog away, long developed legs easily closing the distance to his running-mates.

There was a simple explanation. Occam's razor. House quoted it often.

Wilson dialed House's office and got a machine. He dialed House's cell and got...static. Damn lousy AT&T. That's was it, he was gonna' switch providers.

Hot and tired and his ass sore, Wilson snatched up his briefcase. Stared at his bus stop. A bus was coming from far down the street, he didn't know which. He looked back to the runners getting smaller and smaller, farther away every second. He sat on the bus bench. The bus pulled up but was not his route. Neither was the one directly following it. His timing was fine. There should have been a bus.

Wilson looked at his hand. Sniffed it. Not his sweat. Not him.

That Samaritan sure looked a lot like...

Wilson sensibly tried to stay put and wait for his bus, but could not convince himself to. He worried. Lots of people looked like other people, right? Wilson stood and paced. Looked like, yes. Looked the same? Not really. Wilson started walking.

Then he started running.

XX

By the time he caught up to the group of joggers, he had sweated through his dress shirt and was soaked. His hair hung over his forehead and his eyes stung from the salty water. But he saw them. There they were.

And there he was. They had slowed to a walk and were filing through a side door into Plainsborough Hospital two at a time. The Samaritan was trailing behind, walking by himself. Wilson knew the door. It was one employees sometimes used to enter and exit Plainsborough when they wanted to access the park-grounds without having to trudge across the parking lot first. It was also where one of the two employee showers were located. A short stairwell led to the basement. Wilson was glad to step into the coolness. At the bottom, he turned right. This hallway lead to the men's showers.

By the time he reached them, the object of his impromptu surveillance had already stripped and was stepping into one of twelve shower stalls.

Same old ugly orange. He really had to suggest an color upgrade to Cuddy. Wilson waited patiently as the room filled with clouds of steam. The cool he had been enjoying gave way to hot and sticky and by the time the Samaritan turned off the water, Wilson felt like a skinless over-ripened banana covered in Saran wrap.

When his Samaritan stepped from the shower and reached for a hospital issue folded towel, Wilson got a front row view of the man's tanned, fit young body. After a few seconds of red-faced gawking, Wilson tore his eyes away and cleared his throat. "Listen, I-"

The Samaritan jumped like he'd been zapped and spun around. "JE-zus!" He quickly wrapped the towel around his waist.

He recognized Wilson from the park. The good Samaritan opened his outraged mouth and asked, "What the fuck do you want?!"

Wilson looked embarrassed, realizing the guy probably thought he was a deviant. Since he had enjoyed the naked view, he supposed that in a small way, he was.

"You followed me." Samaritan correctly guessed.

Wilson face was red. "Well, sort of. Uh, yes, I did but-"

"Not interested." Samaritan said succinctly.

"Wait a second." Wilson held up both palms in a "I come in peace" gesture. He suddenly had no idea what to say to the fellow. Because he had no idea why he had come. Because he had no idea what the fuck was going on.

"Wow, you really suck at this."

"What?" Wilson was confused now. More confused.

"Trying to score."

Wilson swallowed. It was a nice body. Very nice, but, "I'm not trying to pick you up."

"Sure." The samaritan agreed in a tone that was hell and gone from an agreement.

Wilson tried again. "I want to ask you something."

"Look, Doc'. I said I'm not interested. Now do I have to beat the crap out of you or do you want to leave now with a full set of teeth?"

Wilson stepped back. He had not considered - stupidly - that this might be among the possible consequences of stalking a man half his age into the showers; that the guy might not appreciate it. "I, I don't want anything from you, I'm just,...this was just an impulse. I want to ask you something. One question. Okay? That's all."

Samaritan stared and then shrugged. He grabbed a second towel and rubbed at his hair. "Fine. Ask."

To Wilson it appeared the guy wasn't really going to pay attention, because he started sorting through a locker looking for his clothes.

Wilson would be talking to the guy's back. At least he still had his teeth. He took a few seconds to decide which question to ask. To know if he was dreaming might be nice but he doubted this guy - even if he was a dream - would know. And if he did know, he might act true to form thus far and not tell him.

Am I dead? Wilson didn't want to give the fellow any ideas and immediately abandoned that one.

May I lick the water from your chest? As delightful as that sounded to him, he was convinced he'd be visiting an orthodontist within the hour, arranging emergency dental surgery.

Wilson finally settled for: "How did you know I'm a doctor?"

Samaritan turned to him. Looked at Wilson like he was nuts. "You followed me to the showers to ask me that? Plainsborough is a hospital. If you're not a doctor, I'd put money on mental patient."

Wilson knew that was no explanation. Not from ...whoever this guy was. "Come on."

"Fine, okay. This is a teaching hospital and you're too old to be a student. Students don't carry briefcases. I know you're not one of my professors and I've never seen you anywhere in the hospital before today. Those Arnold Churgin shoes tell me you've got more money than a nurse earns, so the only thing left is Doctor."

Wilson tested him out. He wasn't sure why that was important. "I could have just been a man walking through the grounds."

"On your way to where? Plainsborough is four blocks square. Nobody uses those bus stops unless they're a student or they work here. So if you are just some random..." Samaritan looked at him with emphasis, "...creep, then you're a perverted creep."

"I'm not a pervert."

"So we're back to insane then." Samaritan pulled a black T-shirt over his head. Wilson watched the flexing pecks and smooth abdomen with a pang of voyeuristic shame. It was a very nice chest and abdomen. A light dusting of soft brown hair began just below the nipples and thinned to a tempting trail below the towel.

Samaritan applied deodorant and tossed it into a black back-pack. "Doctor then. A queer doc' who follows male med students into the showers."

Wilson was shocked to silence when Samaritan let the towel drop. He watched Wilson, as Wilson got the full view of the country below the very nice chest and abdomen. Wilson blushed to the color of a sun ripened apple. Samaritan laughed, pleased with his work. He'd done it purposely, Wilson realised, and it had elicited the intended effect.

"Yeah, nothing perverted about YOU at all." Samaritan slipped into his jockey's and jeans, zipped up, tightened the leather belt and, without saying another word, gathered up his back-pack. He turned away.

Wilson suddenly felt panicky. "Where are you going?"

Samaritan spared him only an amused glance and disappeared into the hallway.

Wilson called after him, "Wait - what's your name?!"

Samaritan stuck his head back in long enough to answer. Maybe he was beginning to enjoy the game. "Gregory." He said and was gone.

All energy was magically sucked from his body and Wilson was forced to sit down heavily on the change room bench. "I was afraid you'd say that."

XXX

RUMOR IN THE CAFETERIA WAS CAUSTIC GUY WAS WAKING UP COMA GUY.

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Wilson had spent the remainder of that day trying to reacquaint himself with Plainsborough and the world beyond. Only it was impossible because almost nothing was familiar. The buildings, yes, the sidewalks, the trees (not as stately as he remembered), the lay of the grounds. But not the things that fleshed out what was his personal world inside the packaging. The people, the names, the office spaces.

Of course he had immediately gone to his own office on his own floor and found another name on his door. Doctor Judith Hansley, Endocrinologist/Metabologist. A double threat doc'. Not a typo.

Of course he'd gone to the office next door. Stepped through the glass doors, the lights out by this time of night. The room's walls the same but lined with book shelves straining under dozens of heavy tomes. And the desk, not a slick modern computer friendly design, but a large wooden job where sat a very old desktop type computer. The screen had been left on, the green lettering glowing alien. But no green ball. No name on the double doors, just the words: Research/Records.

Wilson looked through the divider to the other, larger room. It was in near darkness but still it was obvious that there was no white-board with familiar writing on it, no coffee maker, no cracker boxes. He turned back to the office. The easy chair was absent. No cane was hooked over it's comfortable high back where he would rest, or catch a nap to, for a while, escape from the pain.

Wilson didn't bother looking for Cuddy or anyone else.

When he left he used the main doors. The cars were old; long, square. Wrong.

Ir was getting dark now which mean it was well passed eight o'clock. Wilson checked his wallet. Credit cards all there. Blank checks (dated 2008) with his home address, all correct. He had six hundred dollars in cash (thank god he'd had kept that much out of his pay deposit) but would he still have a bank account? Is the money usable? He had three one hundred dollar bills and ten twenties. He examined a twenty dollar bill under the nearest parking lot light. Nineteen-ninety-five. Not a single car on the lot appeared that new.

Wilson looked around, his mind desperately grasping at absent hope, but no one and nothing appeared out of the dark to help him. He panicked a little, breathing fast. Scared. Bit his lip. Panicked again. Because at that minute, he understood that he was fucked.

No bank would accept dollars with future print dates. He was pretty sure no bank machines existed...where ever, WHEN ever the hell he was. He returned to the bus stop because he had no idea what to do or where to go. Even if his condo building existed, someone else was undoubtedly enjoying his Jacuzzi tub and spacious living room.

Wilson sat and thought but drew a blank. A terrifying black sinkhole of a blank. His heart pounded and he felt faint, suddenly wanting to cry. Only he was too sick with fear.

Between the hospital and the students residences, a tiny neon sign shone feebly from two blocks away. An all night grocery store. Maybe...

He walked the two blocks with trepidation and, once reaching the door, hesitated, considering abandoning the whole idea. Except he had nothing to lose. If it didn't work, he could always just walk out. Or run.

He was glad to see the night cashier was a young woman in her early twenties. Her hair was died pink and black and she wore a short puffy, pink cotton one-piece that dwarfed her skinny legs. She looked to Wilson like cotton candy on a stick. Around her neck were half a dozen gold and silver chains that clinked whenever she moved.

He walked to a cooler and grabbed the first thing he saw, Crystal Pepsi. Whatever, he was thirsty. Placing the disgusting beverage on the counter, the bored clerk punched the required keys.

Indifferent to manners, "Eighty-nine cents." She announced, not caring in the least.

Wilson swallowed and placed one of the hundred dollar bills on the counter.

She looked annoyed. "Don't you have anything smaller?"

"No." He lied.

She opened her till and rummaged around for change, found it and slammed it shut. Not bothering to count it back to him, she thrust the money into his hand. "Have a nice evening." She said with an icy smile while wishing him injury.

Wilson searched for, and found, two other late night convenience stores. He managed to pass one of the other two hundred's and then called it quits before his luck changed. By the time he was finished, he had covered eight square blocks and his feet inside his expensive Arnold Churgins were killing him.

Recalling a seedy hotel/bar somewhere in his travels, he found enough energy to find his way back there and booked a room for the night. The price at the Roadway Inn, tucked away not far from the north end of Half Acre Road, was within his budget. Two stories. Thirty-nine dollars per night. Extra towels more. Wilson handed the cash over to the very old, very overweight pasty woman behind the counter. Clearly unhappy with her television watching having been interrupted, she went right back to Jaws II and he found his room on the second floor. He took the stairs.

There was no deadbolt and the chain was missing. Wilson jammed a chair up against the doorknob and hoped no one with criminal inclinations wandered by. The television remote didn't work and neither did the air conditioning. But at least there was a working shower, one complimentary packet of shampoo/conditioner and clean towels.

Wilson sat on the bed, listlessly waiting while fatigue and fear argued. He needed the rest but that meant morning would come all the sooner and what then?

XX

WELL, AS LONG AS IT'S INTERESTING

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Wilson awoke from a choking dream where he was trying to run through an atmosphere as thick as honey. Every step sucked at his limbs and dragged him back. Breathing was only possible with conscious desperation. He flailed at the gooey stuff as, just ahead, a hand and familiar face beckoned him to hurry. If he just hurried, if he just tried harder, he would get there, no problem. The face shook its head in mockery. Laughed the laugh of one expecting the failure. He called, "House. I ca...I can't move...help me."

The face vanished. his strength gave way and he was toppling over to drown in a ocean of honey. He was sinking into the black, knowing he was dying. Horrified and helpless and crazy with rage that he did not even know why...

Wilson sat up, wiping the sweat from his face. The room was baking hot. The morning was late. He found his watch where he'd tossed it onto the scuffed side table. Ten-twenty. The temperature outside would already be in the high seventies.

Sunlight poured through the shabby curtains and with it returned the knowledge and fear. Wilson felt like a man stripped of identity and bereft of his country. Just call me Bourne.

He showered, dressed back into his sweat stained shirt. At least it appeared almost clean as he had hung it up in the bathroom the night before while he showered, the steam taking out most of the wrinkles. He had then carefully folded it, laid it between the cushions of the room's sole padded chair. This morning, it looked passable.

He turned the lock on the door knob, pocketed the key and ate a greasy breakfast at a tiny diner a few blocks over. The food and bitter coffee helped him feel better physically, if nothing else. Now nursing his third cup of the murky fluid, he was devoid of purpose once more. Wilson wasn't sure how long he'd be able to hold himself together. He wasn't sure where to go, what to do. Who do you speak to about something like this? Where do you go for help? He didn't know. In a place where he knew no one and no one knew him, where he figured he wasn't suppose to even exist, he couldn't even guess. The only thing of which he was sure is that he was absolutely lost. He had no more ideas, and so no decisions. Not a single goddamn useful thought.

The only thing he could think to do, which was as useless as sitting in the hotel room, was return to the grounds of Princeton Plainsborough Hospital. At least the place looked familiar and felt something akin to home. He took his spot at the bus stop and stared at the ground. Though he had not smoked in fifteen years, he suddenly craved a cigarette. It was the stress.

The sun felt good on his back. A simple physical pleasure. A tease of something normal. It was one last taste of being real. A body and soul-caress; an after-life mint. Leaning over almost double, with elbows resting on boney knees, Wilson sank into such a frightened mental state that it held him like a drugged stupor. He stayed that way until all paralyzing thoughts left him, drifting away into the sunshine and the breeze. Until the sun's warmth no longer reached him and he was stone cold numb.

A hand thrust itself into the center of his vision, bumping him from the relatively calming state of hopelessness and back into the awful panic of completely screwed. The hand held an unlit cigarette under his nose. Wilson took it without even having to think about it, his hand working like an automaton.

Wilson put it in his mouth. The other hand struck a match and lit it for him. He sucked in the deadly gases and exhaled through his nose. A practice easily adopted again as though no years had gone by at all.

Wilson knew who the hand belonged to. A who from somewhere so ridiculous it may as well be another planet. Or in a different dimension or maybe just from inside a grain of undigested pasta he'd eaten for dinner once. The Who existed somewhere removed from him. Remote and unseen. Even if he acknowledged the Who, no one else would. No reason for them to believe him. He himself didn't believe it.

The Who body sat down beside him. Without looking up, Wilson knew. But that Who was just not possible. That young Who, that young arrogant, sarcastic, attractive, sexy, naked, dripping wet body Who with the just not-possible name.

Wilson heard the Who.

"Did you sleep here?" Who asked.

Wilson straightened up, posture suggesting that heart and hope were still bent double. He looked over. Gregory, puffing on his own smoke, looked back, then turned his eyes to the crowds of students, nurses, professors and doctors all filing past in one direction or the other. Wilson saw that Gregory Who was neither remote nor other-dimensional. He was sitting there looking as alive as he pleased, oblivious to the reality that he was just a figment inside Wilson's fucked-up circumstances, his voice possibly just a temporary bout of tinnitus.

Wilson managed to make his mouth work and answered the not there Who. "No."

Gregory nodded. "Hmn. Got any family?"

Wilson decided not to elaborate on the various drama's of the Wilson tribe. "Not here."

"Got a home?"

He sighed, tired already from the questions. "Not here."

"Got a girl? - Wait, I guess that one would be a no."

The drill was hollowing him out. "I don't really feel-"

Gregory Who - House - stood up. "Come on." He said.

Wilson was heart-free and spirit-lite. He stared up mutely. Stay here? Or go with the ghost creature with the impossible name? He guessed another pointless decision made no difference since he was already fucked.

Wilson stood, somewhat shakily. "Where are we going?"

Gregory started to walk, though just slow enough for Wilson to keep up. "You can buy me lunch."

XX

"Here." Greg tossed him a white helmet.

Wilson, with a respectable measure of fear in his eyes, just stared at the 1970's Kawasaki. "We're taking that!?" He yelped. Just the thought of getting on the contraption was enough to snap him from his mental idle. "Is that thing even big enough for the two of us?"

Greg approached the motorbike and jumped on.

JUMPED on.

Wilson felt tickled inside, an actual jolt of pleasure in his chest (he'd begun to miss those) to see it. It was the whole, lightening fast, gracefully executed ballet of it. Greg didn't stop, take a second to balance himself, carefully lift his right leg over the seat and ease it into position. He didn't even just swing his right leg over like mounting a horse. No, he approached the bike and with the control of the naturally athletic leaped in the air, with both legs bent and together, straightening and spreading them at the last second, ending up comfortably straddled on the seat like he'd practiced the move every day until he'd got it perfect. Wilson imagined that, considering the fluid ease of the motion, he had been doing it this way a good while.

How Greg had managed to preserve his nads through all of it was admirable.

"It's a seven-fifty. Plenty big enough. Besides, we're not going far." He said and motioned with a flick of his head for Wilson to hop on.

Wilson did. Not athletically, but gingerly like it was a horse that might bolt. Or a maybe a nasty mule that might kick.

He had never in his life been on a motorcycle. "What do I hold on to?" He also had no idea, at first, where to put his feet until Greg lowered two small levers on either side of the bike just behind his own footrests. Wilson gingerly placed each foot in their proper positions. His patent leather shoe bottoms had no grip and his feet slid around on the smooth metal sticks. It seemed a precarious perch for riding a two wheeled organ donor.

Greg reached behind his own back, grabbed Wilson's ignorant hands, and pulled them around his own waist. Wilson felt a little less numb now. In fact, as Greg revved the engine and the bike lurched forward, Wilson's heart gathered speed as well. But he linked his fingers together and held on tight.

At a speed that made his eyes sting, Wilson hung on until his arms ached while Greg steered the bike through the streets with the skill of a veteran. Wilson could feel Greg's muscles under his fingers contract and tighten as he maneuvered the bike through some very heavy mid-day traffic. Occasionally, he passed so close to a car's bumper, Wilson could see the surprised looks of the backseat passengers.

Greg exchanged fingers with one or two of the extra annoyed drivers and once came close to cutting off a cop car but was self preserving enough to wave an apology to the frowning policeman.

"Not long" turned out to be fifteen minutes of sustained terror. Eyes shut against the inevitable, Wilson endured. Confident they would never survive, he eventually gave himself over to the thrill of the ride. What the hell? He was dead anyway.

XX

Greg left the heavy traffic and started down some wider, more picturesque lanes. It was a poorer area but still offered its charms in older trees, even older houses and trimmed lawns. He pulled in behind one of the taller houses on the wide street and parked the bike by the tumbling down garage.

"I thought we were going for lunch?" Wilson asked as they climbed off.

"We are." Greg answered, ushering Wilson up the back outside stairs of the old fashioned three story house.

Greg's tiny apartment occupied the entire top floor, yet it only consisted of a single large room with a twin bed, a small fridge and sink, and a two burner hot plate. A toaster oven sat on the kitchen's postage stamp counter top. At one end of the room was the tiny bathroom with only a toilet and single shower. Wilson was fairly sure the bathroom had once been the room's only closet.

Evidently he was correct as Greg hung his coat on a coat rack. It was the kind a person might find in a clothing store, a single metal rod suspended between two three-legged metal stands. There was also a chest of drawers. A small, cheap looking acoustic guitar leaned against one corner of the room.

All in all, it appeared Gregory House lived pretty close to the bone.

Wilson could think of nothing but to say "Nice."

Greg shot him a look that called him a liar. He took up his guitar, sat on the edge of the unmade bed and did a very inspired variation of China Grove. Wilson seated himself on the room's only other seat, a padded green foot stool.

Greg thrust the guitar aside, leaving it on the bed. "Wanna beer?"

Wilson didn't but thought it would be rude to decline. He nodded.

While Greg fetched two Coors from his tiny fridge, Wilson asked, "Are you paying for your education yourself?" He knew House's (his House's) Dad had helped some, but he was curious as to how much help. House had never talked much about his dad and Wilson was suspect that there was some bad blood between them.

The fridge contained very little food. The place had one cupboard and, when Greg opened it to grab a box of Ritz crackers to have with their beer, all else he could see were a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, a handful of cutlery standing in a glass and a stack of plastic covered paper plates.

Greg handed Wilson a beer and set the cracker box on the floor between them. "Some." He said, answering Wilson's last question. Greg popped his beer can, tossing the tab on the room's lone window-sill. "I bar-tend on the weekends."

"Oh." Wilson's mind went back to his on-campus days. Money in his pocket, studies, Alpha Epsilon Pi, fraternity parties. A convertible. Girls.

Greg was watching him. "What's up with you?" He asked unexpectedly.

Wilson was caught off guard, though he understood Greg's meaning. How to answer? What to say? The truth was he didn't know, but he didn't think his new friend would accept such a not-really-an-answer answer. If the shit hadn't actually been happening, he wouldn't buy it either.

A half-lie seemed the safest option. Wilson drank his beer, the room suddenly feeling hot and close. "Have you ever,...in your life, one day turned a corner and suddenly you have no idea who the hell you are?"

Greg didn't answer. Just watched him with those beautifully intense eyes that were, Wilson felt, peering directly into his soul.

Wilson tried to elaborate without sounding maudlin. "I,...something happened to me,...something bad. Something terrible and I...left home. I left everything behind. Friends, family, job, life,...everything." It was, in a certain sense of the spirit, true.

"What happened?" Greg's voice was surprisingly gentle.

Wilson looked at him, determined not to let his eyes water. "Someone very close to me died." Himself of course. This had to be death but, looking at his companion, he supposed it wasn't such a raw deal. "The next thing I knew, I was here, a long way from home - if it's even still there. I have nothing,...there's nothing for me here. Not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my knee." And I can't go back home this-a-way.

"You can't go back?"

Wilson looked into the remains of his beer and, in that instant, he wanted to look up and see the House he knew. He wanted that so badly it hurt. A hard, heavy ache that had teeth.

The younger Gregory he was only starting to know was still watching him, waiting for him to speak.

Very, very quietly, "I don't think so." Wilson said.

XX

I'M IN CHARGE OF OUR RELATIONSHIP.

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Greg pulled up to the Rodeway Inn. Wilson climbed off with a heart made of lead. Greg took the helmet from him and put it on, tightening the strap.

"Thanks for lunch." Wilson said.

Like the previous night, like after breakfast and after (though not during) the hour talking with Greg and drinking his beer in his tiny third floor apartment, Wilson felt hopeless again. Scared. Because, although Greg mumbled a standard reply, he didn't so much as wave goodbye as he did a U-turn in the street and drove the motorbike away down the road. Wilson watched until the bike turned a corner and the whine of it's engine faded. It was probably the last time he would ever see...any House, anywhere. Greg had not mentioned a future beer. No talk of a get-together of any kind.

He returned to his dingy hotel room. It was more expensively furnished (which wasn't a compliment) in comparison to Greg's place, but it was empty, stale and cheerless. Greg's place had warmth, a light salting of personality, beer, talk, music and

Greg House.

Wilson stared mechanically at the television for most of the afternoon. A stupefying parade of soap operas, talk and game shows played across the smoke stained screen. It passed the time and filled up hours of fear. But it left him with a lonely evening in the fading light of existence. He felt that, when the sun finally tucked itself away behind the earth, he would disappear too.

Despite that, he death-marched his way to the front desk and paid for another night. The old woman was slumped in her Lazy-Boy, blue slippered feet up. She told him to put the cash on the counter.

Wilson bought a coffee and a bag of barbecue potato chips from the vending machine. The coffee was brownish dish water but hot at least. He returned to his room to drink and eat - practically a bonafide human.

When he finally slept, he slept the disturbing slumber of the condemned.

XX

He would have to get a job.

When by the beginning of his third day in...where ever the fuck he was, it dawned on him that maybe he wasn't dead. He might very well be insane or still dreaming. but those hunger pangs and blistered feet felt real enough. The sharp pain from the pin he stuck in his arm hurt as expected - if he were real.

So perhaps he was. It was a pointless debate because he felt, tasted, got tired and missed Greg House as though he were real, so even if he was un-real, he'd need money to keep his un-real self from ending up as an un-real street un-person. And that was so fucked up he couldn't think about it.

Without the proper credentials as proof, getting a job as a doctor was out. So do what? He hadn't needed to work at all during college and medical school. He tried to think back to his part-time jobs as a teenager. There wasn't much. He'd helped his dad in his small department store sometimes, pricing and putting things away on the shelves. He'd had a paper-route when he was twelve for about a week until he went out with a cold in the pouring rain to deliver and ended up with pneumonia. They hired another boy.

His odd job resume couldn't compete with a fortune cookie, and he had no way to prove he even knew how to cook. But it might be worth trying to get a job as short order cook in a small restaurant somewhere. The revolving doors to that glamorous life ensured owners often hired people on the spot. I.D.? Immigration papers? Stop teasing me.

Greg had mentioned he bar tended. Wilson flipped through the yellow pages and wrote down the addresses of all the likely bars near Plainsborough or somewhere between there and Greg's apartment. There were five likely's. Wilson called three of them before he heard a yes as to whether they had a bar tended named Greg who worked weekends.

He's a friend and he said you might be hiring. Are you? Are you hiring cooks?

We might be. Can you come and see me in an hour?

Sure.

It was Wednesday and Wilson walked the eleven blocks to introduce himself to the night manager.

Any experience?

Some.

Do you know how to make Yorkshire puddings?

Yes.

It's part time. Weekends only.

No problem.

Can you start Friday night?

Yes.

Come at six.

Thanks.

From oncologist to a drunk's best friend. Plus tips.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

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To be continued...

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	2. FORWARD In REVERSE Part II

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TV Shows » House, M.D. » **FORWARD IN REVERSE Part I**

B s : A A A

Author: GeeLady

Fiction Rated: M - English - Angst/Romance - Reviews: 23 - Published: 02-03-08 - Updated: 02-17-08

id:4050510

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FORWARD In REVERSE - Part II

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A story of being and time. (Not really a time travel thing. Not sure what the hell it is though).

Summary: Wilson's present and possible past and House's present and Wilson-altered past. An exploration of what is/was/could-be & could-have-been. Pre-slash, slash, humor, angst, character death - but not REALLY!

Pairing: Wilson/House/Younger House.

Rated: M, NC-17, Mature, Adult.

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Obsession is dangerous.

---------------------------

Greg was surprised to see his new friend show up on Friday night at his place of work, and told him so with a joke. "Quit following me, ya' perv'."

Wilson quickly learned the routine of being a cook at a busy, rowdy neighborhood bar. The food was basic but tasty; steak sandwiches, nacho's with all the fixin's, burgers and french fries, pizza,...all fast food that had to be prepared fast and right for a room full of hungry patrons. Wilson soon learned his little spicy, delicate touches that adorned his own home cooked meals were too time consuming and had to be discarded here.

But, as one of the place's two short order cooks, he caught on and spent cigarette or coffee breaks out in the alley with Greg or just by himself. Greg was a draw at the bar. He wasn't the chatty type of bartender which most people actually appreciated, but he mixed drinks fast and, because of his incredible memory, tweaked them to just the right mix for his more regular customers. He also occasionally, if the owner tipped him enough, would sit and play at the bar's scratched, upright piano. That it was out of tune went unnoticed.

It was hot, sweaty work though and Wilson was always glad to escape the oppressive, smokey atmosphere at shift's end. "Why can't they air condition the place at least?"

Greg started up his bike parked at the curb directly in front of the establishment, wondering if Wilson had been a monk or was just pulling his leg. "It's a bar. Comfortably cool people don't get thirsty." The bike sputtered. He tried again and revved it up a few times.

Wilson nodded. "It's late. See you tomorrow."

Greg didn't answer as the Kawasaki sputtered and died. He opened the small gas tank. "Son of a bitch! Some one siphoned my gas." He got off the bike and stared at it as though that would somehow solve the problem. "It's not even a gallon tank. Who does that!?"

"Any gas stations around here?"

Greg threw an angry arm in an non-specific direction. "Yeah, out on the highway. Nothing else would be open now."

That was too far to push the bike and Greg's apartment was an hour's walk away if he hurried. Wilson looked at his watch. It was almost three AM. Wilson's hotel was a fifteen minute walk. "You can crash at the hotel tonight if you want. You can borrow my pajama's."

Greg sighed. He clearly didn't want to leave the bike in front of the bar overnight.

"Maybe Carl'll be willing to lock it up in the back room for a night?"

Carl the owner and boss agreed. Then he locked up his bar, climbed into his spanking new silver Nissan Maxima and drove away.

"Thanks for offering us a lift!" Greg yelled after him, then for Wilson's ears only, "Asshole."

Greg House and authority, Wilson thought, not compatible in any decade.

Greg lit a cigarette. "How far is the hotel from here?"

"'Bout two miles, but with legs like that you could do it in one."

They made it back to the hotel in twenty-five minutes. Greg stepped into the room ahead of Wilson, who turned the door latch and pushed the chair up against the door, a nightly ritual. "Bath room's over there," He said, "and you just had the grand tour."

Greg smiled a bit and made use of the toilet, not bothering to shut the door. Wilson was glad Greg's back was turned away at least. Wilson didn't want to be exposed to the temptation and then to have to try and sleep while his penis was itching to disco.

"I'll sleep on the floor." Wilson said and began pulling out the extra blankets from the dresser's bottom drawer.

"Why?" Greg asked.

At Wilson's quizzical look, Greg grabbed the top mattress with both hands and pulled it off the bed. It took up almost all of the available floor space but it was the better idea. "Which do you prefer, something high or something soft?" Greg asked.

Wilson stared at Greg - the clinging t-shirt, the snugly jeans that accentuated those fetching legs...the mystery region just below his belt that teased his senses so mercilessly...Wilson's crotch ached and he realized he had not answered his friend. "Um, don't care."

Wilson escaped to the shower, closing the door.

Greg waited his turn.

Wilson, finished with his shower, had changed in the bathroom and was wearing a t-shirt and boxers, his habitual sleeping ensemble. While Greg showered, he sat on the box mattress, counting out his tips. Cooks didn't get many but for this shift it amounted to a little over eight bucks.

Greg emerged from the shower dressed in Wilson's blue striped pajama bottoms and nothing else. "These were on the hook." He said and Wilson nodded.

Greg fished a fist full of coins out of his jeans pocket and dumped them on top of Wilson's.

Wilson ran his fingers absentmindedly through the money. "What are you doing?"

"Paying you for tonight."

"Why?"

"'Cause you're sleeping on a box spring."

"So?"

Greg became a trifle irritated that Wilson was making a fuss over his gesture. "Relax I didn't give you all my tips. I'm not that generous. I saved the piano tips. Just put the change in a jar and go to a better hotel sometime."

"It's not necessary but thanks." Wilson counted out the coins. Greg's bar tips totaled twenty-six-forty-eight. For Greg, it was lot to give up.

Greg lit a smoke and looked around the room. "Got anything to drink?"

"Uh, yeah. There's a bottle of Jim Beam in the fridge. No ice though."

"That's a pretty good Rye." Greg fetched it, twisted the cap off and took a large swig, not bothering with a glass.

Wilson couldn't take his eyes off him. Under the white-yellow light of the room's shaded lamps, Greg appeared, if possible, even younger. Skin still fresh and unmarked. No stress fractures across his brow, no worry lines around his eyes. Not even the ever present House taut skin to announce the pain. No pinch even to the space between the eyebrows. Neither the tell-tale fatigue that had tilted House's shoulders forward and down. Not the cane or limp that together were woven so thoroughly into the fabric of House's body that they were tantamount to personality traits.

None of that marred the tanned, tight, energy-fired body leaning casually against the room's television cabinet. A body so charged with ability, the room vibrated. Even the slope of the shoulders was straighter; held back, square and true, his strong arms folded across a firm chest. The long legs (muscular, shapely man's legs - elegant and alluring. Wilson doubted that a more perfect set walked the planet anywhere), loosely crossed at the ankles, were at their peak of power. His entire demeanor was cocky and sexy and carelessly self-assured. It suggested a thorough indifference to the opinions of others. However they judged him, he didn't give a shit.

At the sight Wilson was breathless.

Only one aspect told him this man was still House. It appeared he paid almost no attention to his wardrobe. The grey T-shirt, now piled on the bed with the rest of his shed clothes, was frayed at the collar and worn almost through. His jeans were without fail faded, streaked with grease stains from the Kawasaki, the cuffs torn. His jacket, a college affair the color of a brown summer toad, was stained and far too large for him.

Greg had clearly not bowed to the conformities of changing fashions. His clothing choices seemed to represent no era or trend - standing only for himself. Wilson surmised it was because Greg House had been ferried around the world most of his growing years, exposed to one culture after another, exploring them all but adopting none. And, at the age of eighteen, had emerged with an ethnology all his own; a culture of one. The only style of note were the Nike runners. Pricey choice for a student. As for grooming, he seemed satisfied to run a hand through his hair. That hair was a clipped but unruly curly crown falling somewhere between field-mouse and ginger-snap. Right now it was damp and messy and blasphemously sexy.

House, (or simply "Greg" - Wilson liked to think of him with that name as much as possible if only to keep the noisy confusion in his mind down to a small murmur) tipped the bottle upright again, chugging back a substantial mouthful. Swishing it around once or twice, he downed the few ounces like an expert. Greg had acquired the particulars of alcoholism early in life, Wilson thought.

"So,?" Younger Hous- Greg - said (the voice a smoother, slightly higher pitch than the one Wilson remembered). "...where are we doing this?"

Wilson tore his eyes off Greg's mouth and addressed his whole face, "Huh?...what?"

Greg took another bold swallow and gestured around the room with the bottle. "You know, the shower, the bed, the table...or do you like chairs?"

Wilson thought he understood. "I...didn't bring you here to-"

"Oh, come on." Greg played with the cap of the whiskey bottle, repeatedly spinning it on, flipping the bottle, then spinning it off again. He was playing a game with himself: How far will the spinning cap fly and could he catch it before it hit the carpet? It was a ghostly reflection - or precursor - of House's fidgeting fingers; balls, pens, quarters, cane...

"A forty year old guy," Greg educated Wilson without taking his eyes off the flying bottle-cap, "does not invite a twenty-three year old med' student up to his hotel room to play Trivial Pursuit or talk about the suspicious nodules that his last patient presented in her ascending colon."

"Pretty sure of your own observations, aren't you?"

"Yeah, since no one _else_ can be sure of mine." The cap spun off into the air, landing on the sagging bed where Wilson was seated cross-legged.

Wilson picked it up, tossing it back. "I was trying to be nice. You had no where to sleep. You thought I brought you up here to have sex with you?"

Greg smiled. Sighed. "I could have sacked out in the bar or just walked home-"

"-it's miles away!"

"I'm young. Fine, I'll play along. But I've got a class tomorrow at two-thirty so if you're looking to nail me, we'd better get started pretty soon, I need my study sleep. Let's see...inane, and pointless questions until you 'fess up...I know! - How about that local sports team? Penthouse or Playboy? Eaten any good girls lately?.."

"Okay, okay.." Wilson held up a restraining hand. More and more like House by the minute. In truth, Wilson had no thought to doing anything of the sexual nature to young Gregory House when he invited him, but now that the thought was out there, his dick was having other ideas. Wilson had no clue how to continue but with, "Have you ever-?"

"-Had sex? I'm a twenty-three year old med student - Duh! Have I had sex with a forty-year old-?"

"-Thirty-eight."

"Whatever. Thirty-eight then. The answer is no. Sex with a thirty-eight year old guy? No again."

Wilson's dick was doing some of the talking now. "But you're curious?"

"Have you ever had sex with a guy?"

Wilson felt an idiot having to say "No."

"That's even curious-er. Either you're gay and really shy. Or you straight and really curious. Which is it?"

Wilson actually had to think for a few seconds. "I'm sort of half and half."

"Half gay-curious and half straight-shy or the other way around?"

Wilson laughed a little through his nose. "I think I'm sort of gay and I know I'm curious. But only about you." Greg House was the only male Wilson had felt "sort of gay" around. Ever.

"Huh. So am I your cherry?"

"No. I really just want to get to know you."

"Why? Why do you want that? Why not the doctor working in the next office or the nut-job who hangs around the park or, even more tempting, some stallion with a really cute ass in Gorgeous George's Tivoli?"

Wilson stole a glance a bit southward of Greg's pajama string. "There's a nice butt right here."

Greg shook his head. "You are a really different kind of queer you know."

"If you're so offended, why did you agree to sleep in my hotel room?"

Greg shrugged. "Because I'm not offended. I'm straight but curious about you."

"Not about sex?"

"Always curious about sex. But you?...I have a question: why the hell did you followed me that day?"

"Curious about me? I'm easy to get to know." Wilson answered. "As for the shower, bed or table, well, I'd be lying if I said the thought hadn't at least crossed my mind."

Greg smiled and lit another cigarette. He known it from the moment the mysterious dark haired stranger had clamped onto his hand in the park that first day. He'd seen it in his dark, doleful, preoccupied eyes. He'd felt it through the trembling fingers.

Wilson was still talking. "As for why I followed you." Wilson decided to keep it as simple as possible. "You remind me of someone."

"Long lost gigolo?"

"A friend. But, yes, long lost."

"Is he dead?"

Wilson tried not to think about that too much. Or if maybe it was himself who was dead. "I don't know."

"Hmm." Greg puffed.

Wilson almost gasped when he saw how Greg was holding the cigarette. He balanced it precariously between the first and second fingers of his right hand, with his arm held straight up and left arm tucked away under its elbow. Like House. Like in rehab'. Like,...back when House was neck deep in anger and pain, withdrawn in the bitterness of having been betrayed. Was,...was this really...is he...somewhere, sometime...could House be dead? Wilson wondered if he was losing his mind.

Greg looked at his watch. "I'm tired." He butted out his smoke in the room's only ashtray. "Gotta go to sleep."

"I want to spend some time with you."

Greg looked at him, perplexed. "We are."

"I'm mean regularly."

"Why?"

"Because you remind me..."

The younger man snorted. "-of a dead guy, yeah. Take a picture. I'm not him." Greg settled himself under the covers on the mattress. "You want to get to know me, only I'm probably nothing like your friend. So, once more, why?"

Wilson scrambled to find a hand full of reasons to ensure the friendship might bloom beyond work-buddies. It was House, or Greg. Different ages but one and the same. He wanted to know...so many things. "It's nice to,...it feels good to see someone who looks so much like him and talk to someone who...you'd be surprised how alike you and he are." Wilson paused, "Plus I don't know anyone else here. And, yes, I admit I'm attracted to you. But it's not like I'm going to try jumping your bones in the night or anything."

As he'd been attracted to his House. He couldn't be certain if it would have ever been reciprocated. He'd been too afraid to find out. Only this young man was the fresh incarnation of the House he knew. If Wilson was lost, or dead, if House was forever beyond him, then this House, young Gregory, was the only version - the only link - left to that man. He felt somehow that if he lost this one, whatever was going on around him, that had dragged him into itself, would disappear as well. Or he would vanish from it. Either way, he felt certain he would die.

"Can we at least meet for beers once in a while, outside of work?"

Greg turned on his right side, away from Wilson. "I haven't had anyone ask if they could be my friend since the second grade."

"Yeah, okay, I'm lame, I'm Mister Rogers, I'm an anachronism, I admit it. Just say yes and you can go to sleep."

Greg turned to face Wilson again, staring for a few seconds, then nodded. "Fine. But next time come to my place, there's more room. I'll even pick you up. You bring the beer, I'll buy a pizza. You can bask all you want in Gregory."

Wilson breathed a quiet sigh of relief. "Deal."

XX

I care, I'm pathetic

--------------------

The next morning, Greg was up by ten and slipping on his jeans when Wilson awoke. As always, his heart always twisted into a tight knot of worry whenever Greg was preparing to leave. Or whenever he had to leave Greg.

"Gotta prepare." Greg said simply, referring to his class, as he slipped his t-shirt over his head. He tied up his sneakers - not bothering with socks - and looked over at Wilson thoughtfully. "But I've got time for breakfast somewhere. Nana's Café' is a few blocks over, sort of on the way to the bar..." He waited for Wilson to snap out of his early morning sleep zone.

Wilson was instantly awake then. "Uh, yeah. Sure. Be ready in a minute."

Over some high end coffee, breakfast nestled nicely in their stomachs, Greg had a few questions for Wilson. "What did you used to be, before you became a lost, rueful soul?"

Wilson figured it didn't matter if he knew. Most of it was shareable. Just not the stuff that would convince Greg he was not just an anachronism, but an anachronistic fruit-cake. "I was an oncologist."

"And now you're flipping hamburgers in a seedy bar run by a cheap, prick who pockets half the waitress's tips. I'm not sure that was a wise career move."

Wilson felt a longing to spill the whole story. He also felt a sudden wave of terrible loss. A life lost. Half a lifetime gone. A unique man out of reach. Except for this representation of him sitting across the booth sipping coffee and smoking. Gregory was like the shell, the mold, into which a man would slowly be poured. "I can't prove I was ever a physician, so I can't work as a doctor."

"Did you prescribe the wrong medication?"

"Sorry?"

"Did you royally fuck up, kill someone and lose your license?"

"No. I lost..." Wilson paused. He had no idea how to explain it. "Yeah. I fucked up."

Greg didn't ask for details or rub it in, he just shrugged. "Shit happens. So you gonna work for Carl the rest of your life or get back to doing something worth your intelligence and education? Or did you lose your license permanently?"

"Not permanently. But if I'm stuck...as I am for twenty more years, my career days will be over anyway."

"I know a guy who can help with that."

"You know a guy? What kind of "help"?"

"A guy who makes past mistakes disappear. And the kind of help it looks like you need. Papers."

Wilson thought he understood and he didn't like the idea. "Fakes? Fake ID? Fake degree? Fake license?"

"Yup. He can make you a brand new _you_. All for one low, low price."

There was no way in hell he was going to do it but, "How low?"

"Two thousand dollars."

"_That_ low huh?"

"That's a steal. They'll all look realer than Memorex."

Curious, "Have you utilized this man's unique talents?"

"Once or twice, back in the day, when it was in every way necessary."

""Back in the day"? You've only been of legal drinking age for three years. Just what and how long have you been faking?"

Greg smiled a little mysteriously, a little facetiously. "He had a paper done for me." At Wilson's round eyes, "Please. I'm not cheating my way through med school. It was one paper. A redundant waste of my valuable time that I needed in order to write the important one."

"I don't think I want to go that route."

"You know a better route out of Carl's beer shack?"

"I could go to med school all over again." At least he'd breeze through second time around.

"For that you'd still need fake ID and a shit pile of other fake stuff. If you're going to do that much, may as well do it all."

"In for a misdemeanor, in for a felony, huh?"

"At least think about it." Greg reached over and took Wilson's wrist, gently twisting it so he could see the time. The touch was so unexpected Wilson almost flinched. But the feel of Greg's fingers on his arm, and the warmth they left behind, radiated pleasant sensations throughout his body.

Greg dropped some money on the table and stood up. "Now I really gotta' go. See you at work tonight."

All Wilson could manage was, "Bye..." He watched Greg slip out the door, the bell above the door chimed. "...House."

XX

Wilson killed some of the afternoon wandering through a J.C. Penny store. He bought a book to read from a slush bin, two casual shirts and a pair of jeans. He read in a nearby park, ate a solitary lunch in the form of a giant cheese pretzel and was back at the shabby room by three o'clock.

Maybe a nap before work. He lay down on the mattress, where Greg had slept, and tried to find the smell of his body in the pillow and sheets, but all his nose could detect was the faint odor of cheap shampoo. He stayed there anyway, thinking about him.

Wilson had in fact awoken for a short while the night before and spent the time watching Greg sleep and indulging, with some guilt, in a waking fantasy. About himself crawling into bed with Greg and touching him, only tentatively at first. Greg turning over, waking sleepily, moving toward his touch, pressing their bodies togther. Wilson then kissing him, caressing him, taking his clothes off, rubbing his hungry body and hard cock against Greg's sweet flesh and equally hardening cock. Greg responding, touch for touch and kiss for kiss. Wilson making love to him for half the night, kissing, sucking - savoring him. Fucking him...

But what happened was Greg kept sleeping, oblivious to Wilson's hopeless longing. And Wilson, tiptoeing to the bathroom, with visions of a passive Gregory happily yeilding to his lusts, quietly brought himself to orgasm with a soapy hand.

Returning to his bed, Wilson spent one the loneliest nights of his life with Greg sleeping only three feet away.

XX

That night's shift was the busiest the bar had been for weeks and neither Wilson or Greg had time for a smoke or a dinner break. Carl was short staffed and though it meant more tips for them, it also meant being run off their feet.

Greg, with Wilson behind him, drove his motorbike back to his tiny apartment. Greg shed his thin summer jacket, letting it drop on the floor. Wilson picked it up and hung it on the department store type coat rack.

Greg looked at Wilson. "Now we can drink." He announced and pulled two beers from the fridge.

"It's two AM." Wilson said but popped the beer tab.

"No classes tomorrow. No papers due. No laundry, no goddamn Carl. I'm having a beer."

Wilson perched himself on the low footstool, but after a few minutes, his back protested from the bent posture he was forced to adopt on it, so he moved to the floor, cross-legged style.

Greg joined him, leaning back against his bed. For a while they talked. Greg about the fellowship he had applied for. He was only a few months from finishing but was eager to get his hands on some real cases. Greg had a question or two about Wilson's former practice which Wilson explained, properly edited of course. Greg was brilliant, no doubt about it. Even this young, it was easy to see how far he was to go. He was Gregory House. Inexperienced maybe but his intelligence was still House's through and through.

Wilson watched Greg pull a small box from beneath his bed. He opened it and grabbed a plastic baggy filled with what Wilson knew wasn't-

"-Cat-nip?" He asked.

Greg smiled. "Greg-nip."

Greg had shed his shoes and socks, which Wilson found strangely provocative. He'd then mirrored the action and they were both sitting on Greg's dirty carpet, legs crossed and enjoying the rare pleasure of no work or, for Greg at least, no due papers or intern shifts. No distractions of any kind but the pleasantly relaxing, un-demanding company of each other.

Pretty heavenly Wilson decided.

Greg fumbled with a rolling paper and expertly rolled himself a very thin joint. Lighting up, he first offered it to Wilson who shook his head.

"How did you retain that fantastic memory smoking those?" Wilson realized his tense slip but Greg wasn't paying attention to grammar just then. He was otherwise occupied sucking in a hearty lung full of sweet perfume. Holding it in he turned suspect eyes to Wilson, and let it out, hacking.

Wilson admonished, "Don't you know studies have shown marijuana can short circuit working memory and has lasting negative effects on synaptic function?"

In answer Greg took another deep drag and spoke the doobie speak of "get the words out while losing a little smoke as possible", a cadence from the rim of the esophagus. "You sound like my dad..." - wheeze! - "...he buys into all that crap too."

Wilson was reminded again that here, in this life, he and Greg were a generation apart. "Just thought I'd mention it." Wilson added weakly.

Greg pulled out a second object from under his bed. A 24 ounce-er of Jack Daniels. It was clear Greg wanted to party and Wilson wasn't sure he was up to it. But he thought he ought not to decline this second offering for fear Greg would quickly become bored with his company and that would be it for the pal-ing around.

Not wanting to again find himself friendless and alone, Wilson accepted, turned off the cap and took a large swig. The molten liquid charred his innards going down and he coughed.

Which satisfied Greg who, upending the bottle, spilled a generous portion down his gullet, hardly stopping to swallow. He didn't even have to clear his throat after. It may as well have been apple juice.

An hour later Wilson, a few jiggers to his name but still sober, was witness to the rapid decline of his young friend. Greg had imbibed a couple dozen jiggers and had caught a case of the pie-eyed giggles. Wilson would tell a joke and start Greg laughing before he even sprung the punch-line.

"I think you've had enough." Wilson counseled. But Greg was nearing the gone mark. And, Wilson thought, seriously damn cute with his dreamy, zoned eyes, and soft disheveled hair curling off in every direction the compass had a letter for. He sported a perpetual and mysterious tidbit of a smile that turned up the corners of his mouth, like he'd just awakened from an erotic dream.

Greg, long legs stretched out in front of him, took another drink, nearly toppling over sideways. But a seeming invisible string tugged the top of his head back to center and he just managed to stay upright. He had a flush to his cheeks that was not only a text-book sign of inebriation, but was terrifically attractive on his fine cheek bones. His eyes were dilated to their maximum and shone like black pearls embedded in thin rings of turquoise stone. He shook a scolding finger at Wilson, smiled and took another swig. "Not 'nuff."

Wilson thought again about his House, from before. Both the young and old Greg possessed some indefinable sexy something that he had never been able to put a finger on. Understated, sometimes rough or soft, often vulnerable looks combined with a mental brilliance that together left you light-headed and breathless.

Wilson frowned. That run-down didn't quite hit the mark either. Greg House was, if nothing else, sublime.

Wilson was enjoying every minute of the evening and laughing himself, but it was because of the entertaining company. Greg was a sweet, funny drunk.

House from...back then...was often a fun guy,...but this vibrant young man's zest for life and all the fun it had to offer was infectious. Greg reached over and turned on his tiny bedside lamp. It created more shadows than illuminated dark corners.

"It's getting late." Wilson said. Though neither of them had work tomorrow and though Greg, at twenty-three-going-on-twenty-four, no doubt possessed the physical endurance to party half the night and be up with the birds not much the less for wear, Wilson knew he'd be dead-slogging for twenty-four at least. Tomorrow was Sunday and though Greg was going to laze the day away, Wilson didn't have any clean clothes left and the local laundromat beckoned. He would need to accomplish at least that much.

Greg had suddenly gone so quiet it made Wilson look up from his casual observations of the cigarette burns on the yellow carpet. Greg was looking at him with a veiled intensity Wilson was hard put to place and had somehow sobered a little.

Wilson tilted his head back for a final taste of whiskey, had half swallowed when, in a voice only a sleepy python would own Greg murmured, "You won't smoke pot and refuse to get drunk. How does one get you into bed?"

Wilson managed to force the whiskey down passed a cough. Or three. "What?" He nervously glanced in Greg's general direction, but couldn't keep his eyes there. They quickly shifted away from those beautiful, bewitching blue's.

"Don't play deaf with me or I'll examine your ears with a sharp pencil." Greg was sitting five feet to Wilson's right and facing him, his back up against the metal bed spring and sagging mattress. "And you heard me."

"You said you weren't interested."

"I changed my mind."

"You're straight."

"That doesn't mean I'm not interested in sex."

"You're weird on so many levels."

"Don't forget horny."

Wilson's eyes glued themselves once more to the irregular carpet burn spots, and he shook his head in uncertainty and confusion. "I,..I don't understand. This, ..this.."

When next Wilson looked up Greg had peeled off his T-shirt, exposing a chest just made for nibbling and, with a beguiling smile, was rapidly snaking out of his jeans and jockey's, all the while closely watching Wilson's reaction.

Wilson swallowed as he got his second, and far more enchanting, gander of Greg's golden goods. "Oh my." Wilson tried to look away from the very male, very shapely tanned body being offered, but couldn't. "You know, I don't think I can compete with..." He gestured to the whole of Greg.

"This isn't a contest." Greg had got onto his hands and knees and, moving as gracefully as a leopard, was creeping ever closer.

Wilson, eyes glued to Greg's arms and shoulders, neck and chest..."Then what is it?" He asked.

"An urge."

"Greg. I'm not sure-"

"Your lips say no, but your pants say yes."

His wits escaped him and, yes, his dick was already filling up it's dance card. Resistance was futile (and would have been particularly stupid as well. Potentially earth-quaking sex didn't come along that often). Wilson's self respect was dissolving in the pot of his own boiling hunger.

But, in a last attempt at keeping his personal ethics intact, "I'm almost old enough to be your dad..."

Greg paused and sat back on his heels, a little put out. "You're a forty year old-"

"-Thirty-eight."

"-Whatever. Thirty-eight year old single, sort-of bisexual male who's about to enjoy an evening of raw, pounding the walls sex with a twenty-four year old. Why are you embarrassed about that?"

"I'm not embarrassed, I'm...thirty-EIGHT years old."

"I'll be gentle." Greg gave him a wicked - wicked! - bad boy grin and leaned closer. Wilson thought he was going to faint from desire and terror both. Greg closed the distance and hovered, his lips an inch away from his Wilson's, forcing Wilson to stare directly into his lustful gaze.

The curtains fell on any further debate.

Then Greg kissed him softly, thoroughly and...

_...god... _

Wilson groaned into his mouth and grabbed the back of Greg's head with both hands, deepening the kiss and forcing his tongue inside. Wilson broke the contact just long enough to say, "You may just kill me tonight you know."

Greg ignored him except for, "Just shut-up and get naked already."

XXX

Dying's easy - living's hard!

The next morning wasn't the wake up Wilson expected at all.

He opened crusty eyes to find himself wedged up against the wall in the narrow bed, Greg's many long limbs draped bonelessly over him like a life-sized Raggedy Andy. Wilson gently nudged him to roll over which he did. Greg had been pickled when the fun began and Wilson was pretty sure he himself must have returned to the trough a few more times because he couldn't remember much about their lascivious activities.

Some had occurred on the floor, he knew that much. And some obviously in the bed. What really sucked was, though Wilson knew for certain he'd had sex with Greg the night before, the memorable parts escaped him. His fantasy had come true and the picture was a fuzzy outline with no details.

Wilson sat up. They were both naked under the covers, which was delightful as far as Wilson was concerned. But they both smelled of stale booze, the room had the sweet odor of cheap pot and his stomach was smeared in dry semen. Not a glamorous after-glow.

Wilson crawled from the bed and stumbled to the shower. Maybe a hot spray, a couple of aspirin and coffee might shake some of the juiciest details loose.

By the time he finished, Greg was awake, lying on his back in the middle of the bed, staring at the ceiling and puffing on his first cigarette of the day.

Wilson smiled a bit. "Morning." He said.

Greg just waved a lazy hand, saying nothing.

"How you feeling?"

Greg coughed. "Like shit."

Wilson wanted to tell him something, "Look, last night-"

"-meant shit." Greg cleared it up for him right away.

Wilson felt a sharp twist in his stomach. He forced his voice into neutral. "I just wanted to say, it was nice."

"Sure." Greg was neither dissenting nor agreeing. It was just a word.

It was the wrong time to declare feelings it seemed and Wilson felt terribly let down. He'd had Greg: tasted him, touched, kissed, caressed, maybe even fucked.

He couldn't remember. His head felt like a down filled lead balloon that threatened to topple off his shoulders. And as to the previous night, his memory was an incomplete setting. All the cutlery and a plate or two, but no meat - of a particular description.

Greg was quietly smoking his cigarette. Today would not be a breakfast together day either, Wilson thought. Nor even a coffee and a "See you later, let's do this again sometime." day.

Greg was lying there, waiting for him to hurry up and leave.

"I can take the bus home." Wilson said while dressing. As he descended the back stairs he wondered if he would see Greg that week at all. The feeling of loss and fear had returned in earnest. For a single night, he'd become closer to Greg than he'd hoped and now he felt as lonely and friendless as before.

XX

But Greg was a man full of surprises. Just two days later he dropped by the hotel after his classes and invited Wilson to go for a ride out to Lake Carnegie. Neither mentioned their mutual unmentionable night. Wilson had been so relieved to see him he made a promise to himself that he would not mention it. If Greg was anything like his other House, he saw sentimentality as a disease of the mind. Wilson wanted the man far more than the man's body and Greg seemed happy enough with his company to have decided on an impromptu motorbike trip to a beautiful area. Wilson commanded himself not to open his mouth and screw it up.

Greg had even packed a few beers and some sandwiches. Wilson was astonished that this Greg House did nice things sometimes. Perhaps it was his way of apologizing for his chilly response to their awkward morning after.

Or, Wilson wondered, maybe this Greg House, like the other, was just lonely.

Greg took the Kawasaki, though not a dirt bike, on a slow trail around the lake as far as the trail reached. At the end was a lake side clearing where a small fire pit was located, long cold. A few scattered beer cans and discarded food wrappings littered the sandy ground. But all in all, it was a pristine and beautiful spot.

Greg parked the bike and found a log to sit on. Pulled out a beer. Tossed one to Wilson.

Greg drank and looked out over the lake. He was quiet and Wilson let him be. That was one thing about Greg House than had stayed true: old or young, he liked quiet.

Wilson was content to admire the Cormorants sitting on a shallow rocky beach just a few hundred feet down from them, and to watch Greg whenever Greg's eyes were occupied elsewhere.

"It was nice." Greg suddenly announced, but in regards to what Wilson was momentarily ignorant.

Greg could see his friend's confusion. "Saturday night. It was nice." He sounded sincere but there was a distance in his eyes. A melancholy cast to his features.

Wilson had pushed the evening from his mind. Now Greg had brought it up and he was terrified to answer. What would _not_ be the wrong response? Finally he settled for, "I thought so."

That seemed to satisfy the other man and he pulled out a second beer. Wilson declined another but nibbled one of the sandwiches. Peanut butter and jam from Greg's cupboard. Wilson keenly wanted to know more about this young man. The other House he had known quite a lot about. But the personal things, the background, the family history that had given rise to such a unique person, was mostly missing. Beyond the bare bones, House had never spoken to him about it.

Wilson decided to ask something to which he already knew the answer, to see if Greg was willing to talk about himself.

Wilson crumpled up his sandwich wrap and shoved it in his jeans pocket. "Got any brothers or sisters?"

Greg just shook his head.

Well, that was informative. Wilson sighed.

Apparently, Greg sensed his curiosity and offered, "Only child. Mom and dad. Dad was a marine pilot. Traveled a lot. We lived where ever they stationed him."

And so, Wilson thought, no real home. These things he already knew but for the new insight that Greg's dad's career had made Greg House a kind of middle-class street kid.

But, "It was cool." was Greg's summation.

Wilson decided to try and change the subject. Intuitively he felt that any more personal questions would sour the afternoon. "I'd love to go swimming." But warning signs were posted up and down the shore prohibiting it. Wilson recalled reading about it in the Princeton Town Topics two weeks previous. A computer error had caused forty thousand gallons of only partially treated sewage to pour into the man-made lake.

Greg stood up and started his bike. "I hate cold water."

Wilson found himself back at the hated hotel room, but at least he had a shift tonight. He'd found a second job two days and one evening a week as cook at a small cafe'. Nicer atmosphere, nicer clientele but no tips. He needed the money and the distraction. One more day spent in that stifling room restlessly waiting to see Greg again and he would have lost it.

He was very glad for the second job especially because that week Greg was loaded down with papers and lectures and Wilson did not see him until their Friday night shift at Carl's bar. Greg seemed distracted and pensive. At cigarette break Greg told him, "My Dad's being stationed state-side."

Normally, that would have been something to be glad about. Greg, however, appeared apprehensive.

"Yeah?" Wilson kept his voice even and kind but not sympathetic. "You gonna' see him?"

Greg's face - Wilson was hard put to recognize the expression - so would a little boy's face look while anxiously waiting for his math grade, knowing if he got anything less than an A, his father would be profoundly disapproving.

Wilson had met John House only once, when the infarction had nearly killed their son.

John, retired, had flown in with his wife from Palm Springs. It was a fortieth wedding anniversary trip. At news of his only child's illness, the man with the military hair cut and stern bearing had been strong, concerned and, Wilson was certain, caring. But during the visit House had seen and talked to his father as little as possible, using every medical excuse to avoid the man. Since he had been mortally ill, that had not presented a problem.

John House and his wife had spent some time at the hospital, spoken to Wilson and the other doctors about his son's condition and chances, and when House had come through Stacey's under-the-counter surgical procedure and awoken pretty much out of danger, John and Blythe had said their goodbyes and flown out again.

Later House had accused him of clandestinely inflicting his parents on him. Wilson had adamantly denied it. House had not spoken to him for days. Wilson told himself it was the pain talking. Not House, just his leg.

"I guess." Greg said in answer to Wilson's last question. "I don't know exactly when they'll be here."

"Didn't he tell you?" Wilson thought that was odd.

"Nope." He answered quietly. "Just that he's coming."

Wilson thought that was strange. Greg had spoken of his father's impending visit like John House was the enemy at the gates - the assault imminent, the particular weapons unknown, the ground between them uneven and littered with anti-personnel devices.

Greg drew heavily on his cigarette and the cherry burned hot. In the alley, it's tiny yellow glow on his fair skin revealed angled shadows and the beginnings of tension in the youthful features. He looked older in the dark.

This was a private little war, Wilson realised. It was Greg against his father. John House was the enemy, he was the unseen antagonist approaching with silent stealth. Greg was the FNG, the fucking new guy who's life was worth only as much as if he could dodge the enemies bullets and make it back to base as quickly and in as whole a piece as possible. Wilson felt nauseous. It was sad and terrible and foreign to even his worst memories and experience of family.

Greg hated or was afraid of his own dad.

Somehow, by whatever methods Wilson did not yet understand, John House had completely fucked up his son.

XXX

Continued in FORWARD IN REVERSE, Part III

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FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT=Quantcast"


	3. Forward in Reverse Part III

FORWARD In REVERSE - Part III

--

A story of being and time. (Not really a time travel thing. Not sure what the hell it is though).

Summary: Wilson's present and possible past and House's present and Wilson-altered past. An exploration of what is/was/could-be & could-have-been. Pre-slash, slash, humor, angst, character death - but not REALLY!

Pairing: Wilson/House/Younger House.

Rated: M, NC-17, Mature, Adult.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Meaning takes time. It takes work.

--

Weeks went by and Wilson had forgotten all about John House.

Greg tried to also, but Wilson could see the trying painted all over his face. Greg's face, that normally glistened; engrossed in whatever they were laughing about or what medical procedures they were discussing, was now primed with whatever dark shadow his father promised to inflict. Greg's eyes would, every-so-often and without warning, shift their attention elsewhere, beyond Wilson or the room or the cheeseburger. Wilson would see tiny lines of tension, a crinkle of worry between his brows, a stiffness of the shoulders. A countenance briefly removed from the circumstances; an uncertainty settling over him. Wilson did his best to distract him and most times it worked.

He was delighted to see Greg House laugh and enjoy himself. So rare in the other, but so part and parcel of this Greg's composition.

One night there was a fire in the Rodeway's storage room and Wilson and the rest of the guests were evacuated to the street. Wilson's room was largely un-touched but the acrid stink of combusted organic and melted poly-vinyl-chlorides left it's sour musk on everything. The electricity had also gone out and there was water damage to most of the first floor.

Wilson was homeless. He would have called Greg for a lift to another hotel if Greg had a telephone. The fire inspector allowed patrons back inside to hastily gather their belongings and Wilson set out at eleven PM carrying his two suitcases to walk to Greg's apartment.

Just over an hour later a sleepy-eyed Greg answered his apartment door in his boxers.

Wilson set his suitcases down on the tiny landing at the top of the rickety stairs. "Fire at my hotel. I'll find another place in the morning, but can I stay here tonight?"

Yawning, Greg reached down and grabbed one of the suitcases. "Sure." He, working on automatic, dumped his stuff out of the top drawer of his dresser to make room for Wilson's things. Wilson didn't own much and it all fit nicely with room to spare.

Wilson immediately remembered that Greg's bed wasn't the two piece type. It was an older fashioned model that had a simple spring assembly with a mattress thrown on top. "I'll sleep on the chair cushions." He said. They would be comfortable for one night, though not quite long enough for his six foot frame. His feet could hang off the end without too much discomfort.

"I'll take the cushions." Greg said in a tone that brokered no argument.

Wilson didn't know what to say to this considerate offer. Then impulsively, "We could share..."

Greg eyed him coyly. "I have a lecture in the morning."

"I have...self control."

One corner of Greg's mouth turned up slightly.

Wilson readied for bed, crawled under the covers and made himself behave. In fact, it was dreamy being nestled up against Greg's warm body. Sleep came easily and he relished that tomorrow he would wake up in the same manner.

When Greg's irritating radio alarm went off at seven-twenty, Wilson allowed himself the treat of spying as Greg dressed. When he heard the Kawasaki start, rev up and speed away, Wilson turned over and went back to sleep. Greg would be gone most of the morning and it would be difficult to look for another hotel without the motorbike to ferry him around. And he didn't have to work until five-thirty that afternoon. Plenty of time left to savor Greg's smell on Greg's pillow in Greg's bed.

By eight-fifteen Greg returned, stripped off his clothes, climbed back into bed with Wilson, telegram-ing in person an explanation: "Lecture canceled. Professor's sick. No sub'."

Then naked House was all over Wilson like white on rice.

XX

Wilson hadn't been treated to wake-up sex for a long time. Not since divorce number three. But this wasn't a quick and then make coffee morning sex. It was Gregory all sweet and submissive and letting Wilson do exactly as he pleased.

What Wilson pleased was to lay on Greg and kiss him hard and deep, let him up briefly for air and then mercilessly dive in again. What Wilson pleased was to suck his nipples and bite his stomach, listening with intense pleasure as Greg gasped, groaned and sweated. Wilson loved that he made Greg's young hips buck convulsively, his mouth hungry and insistent, his cock loaded and charged with desire.

Wilson listened with lustful gratification to Greg's lungs ceaselessly pumping as he pressed his body down on him. He wanted to be Greg's sex partner-lover-master! He wanted to consume him, drink him in, swallow him down, capture his soul with his flesh, possess his roaming mind, seize his injured, stubborn, and mystifying gentle heart. Wilson wanted to unmask everything and then wrap himself around the laid bare delicacy of Greg's deepest self.

What Wilson wanted even more was for Greg to say words other than the spurt of babbles sprung from mindless lust. Wilson yearned to hear _his_ name from Greg's pouting lips, wet with _his_ saliva and parted with desire for _him_. _Only_ him.

"I want you." Wilson vocalized in a low, sonorous murmur, in mindless need for him like a starving carnivore. Wilson's flesh cried out for this man. It was a call from the wild. It was raw craving, impossible to ignore. Like a long forgotten instinct. Ancient; uninhibited; dominant.

Wilson slowed his sexual ministrations, then stopped for a moment, pushing himself off Greg's body...not too far.

At the sudden suspension of favors Greg, luxuriating in the sexual bath, opened them wide and looked up at Wilson looking down on him.

"I'm insane for you." Wilson whispered with heart wide open to what this was becoming for him. The volatile power of it was slowly taking over good sense. He knew he was falling deeply, _deeply_ in love with this man. He knew that if he didn't soon stop and pull back from the driving madness, ultimately he would not be able to.

Greg licked his lips and Wilson couldn't keep his eyes of his tongue as he ran the pink edge of it over those polished ivories.

"I know." Greg answered very quietly, but said nothing more, biting his lip at the torrid heat burning in Wilson's dark chocolate irises. Then he craned his neck, reached up and captured Wilson's lips again for a series of quick kisses, paused and waited. He was asking permission to continue because he had not given the answer he knew James wanted. Wilson assured him by covering Greg's mouth with his own, soon forgetting about what it was he wanted. Instead he kissed and nibbled his way down to Greg's hard, mouth-watering cock...

Greg watched him mesmerized, astonished, enraptured..."A..are y-you going to-?" He asked between disbelieving, transitory words that fought their way through the storms of his helpless panting.

Wilson had wanted to do this since he'd followed him to the shower that first day (And long years before that too).

Greg was flushed with need, his eyes pining for it, his hands, entwined in Wilson's hair, begging for it.

"Yes." Wilson whispered, looking up at Greg - so beautiful to him, so overflowing with sexuality and so fucking _vulnerable_ that Wilson almost _came_.

Wilson took Greg in his mouth, then - in a hurry - wanting to please him quickly, tease, suck and deep-throat fuck him. Make him insane too. Wilson sucked and tongued Greg with endless undulations until he was clawing at the covers and moaning. Until he came with a cry - almost a _sob_ - and bucked, arching his back and gulping air until he collapsed to the hot sheets. "..._fu-u-ck_..._James...just...it's s-so...g-good..._" He said.

Wilson, pleased with his work, crawled back up Greg's perspiring body. _"Here, baby..."_ He whispered so softly it was nearly inaudible, maneuvering Greg's fist around his own engorged, dripping and impatient cock.

_He said James..._ Wilson continued to kiss him again and again and Greg obliged, stroking steadily until Wilson came hard, groaning into the dip between Greg's neck and silken shoulder. Then he kissed him one last time and finally rolled off, laying limply beside him. A hot breeze from the window played over their bodies, taking some of the sweat away.

Wilson raised his head weakly. "Was the window open the whole time?"

"Yup." Greg said, fumbling for cigarettes and a match on his bedside table with shaking fingers.

"So anyone walking by could have heard us...?"

"_Would_ have heard us fucking up here, yup."

"Holy crap."

Greg laughed. "Contrary to what some in your generation thought, pretty much everyone does it eventually."

"I'm only _thirty-eight_."

"Whatever."

XXX

Wilson got up showered and made coffee. He listened to Greg in the shower and wished the curtained stall was big enough for two, but it was not even big enough for one.

Greg stepped out along with clouds of steam that condensed on the walls nearest the tiny bathroom. He had a towel wrapped around his waist which was like wearing, (for all intents and purposes as far as Wilson was concerned), a sign that read: "Please remove towel and fuck me right now."

Wilson smiled at the thought. _Later..._

"Coffee?" He handed Greg a cup. They sat on the bed, Greg in his towel and Wilson in his new jeans and smooth bare chest and talked about their plans for the day. And, an ever present topic in Greg's mind, sex.

"So, you're saying you wanted to knock my teeth out,.." Wilson summed up Greg's reaction to him during that first meeting in the shower. "..not because I was coming on to you, but because I was bugging you?"

"Pretty much."

"Thanks for clearing that up. A bit of an over-reaction don't you think?"

Greg lit and puffed on a filtered smoke. "Right, and following a guy half your age into a shower is regular stuff?"

"Are you regretting I did it?"

"That's not the point."

Wilson shook his head and drank the hot coffee. He'd switched brands and the new stuff was crap. "What _is_ the point?" But he was not unhappy about the conversation. This back and forth with Greg House was caffeine for the soul.

"The point is you're either straight or gay or bi or none of them."

"_That's_ the point? How about the fact I've been married before, three times, to women?"

"So three divorces. Then you're in denial or just very confused."

"I'm not confused. I loved my wives. I also love fucking you."

"That just proves that whatever love is, it's conditional."

"What are the conditions?"

"Unpredictable. They always change. I'll bet you never thought you'd be divorcing all those wives or fucking a twenty-four year old male med student after escaping your former life."

Wilson rubbed his eyes. These discussions, however stimulating, sometimes left him with a headache. "Well, no, to be honest, I didn't see any of that in my future." _Neither __**this**__ in my past._ "Answer me this," Wilson said. "You're not gay, I'm only gay about you. Is this confusion or are we just abnormal?"

"Confusion for sure. Define abnormal."

"Something other than the usual. Irregular, outside the rules..."

"Hmm. Gay, straight, Bisexual, Trans-gender-ed, Abstinent,...what rules are those?"

"Are you saying sexual orientation is limitless?"

"Isn't it?" Greg set his empty coffee cup on the carpet and dropped his spent cigarette in it. He let his towel drop and lay back on the bed.

Wilson ogled him. "I'm _really_ tired." He wished to hell he wasn't. Greg was ready to start up again but his own penis was hiding in his shorts.

Greg smiled seductively. "Sure? I've classes tomorrow and work all week,...opportunity window is closing fast."

Wilson took his jeans and shorts off and lay on top of him but Greg, in a move so fast Wilson hardly felt it until he was on the bottom, flipped him over and was pressing his gentiles into Wilson's crotch.

Wilson decided he liked this position. "How about love?" He asked.

"Thought you'd never ask." Greg said and began to kiss him. Wilson stopped him. His penis wasn't ready to come out and play yet. "No, I mean, what about the emotion?"

"Oh - god! Me naked on top of you and you're still on that?"

"I'm almost forty."

"Thirty-eight." Greg pushed himself up on his elbows to ease their mutual breathing and considered. "Fine. Love is feelings, mind-set, philosophy and has nothing to do with sexual desire."

"Love and sex are separates? How do you figure?"

"Bobbie, Carl's new waitress..."

"Yeah..?"

"She could stick her finger up your nose, but in nine months would that get you a baby?"

"No and gross."

"Wrong protrusion, wrong orifice. Wrong organs for baby-making."

"I'm sure this is going somewhere. Either that or you're comparing sex, specifically sex with _me_, to a perfect stranger picking my nose."

Greg smiled down, all dimples and laughing eyes, and Wilson's chest fluttered with how sexy it looked on him. "I'm saying organs have specific and non-specific uses." Greg explained further. "It might not make a baby but she could still pick your nose."

"This is _not_ turning me on and - _what??" _

Greg tried again. "Okay, A she-male and a womb-man-"

"-A "womb-man"?"

"Guy on the top floor, chick in the basement. The other one's the other way around."

Wilson shook his head and blinked, trying to sort all that out. "I don't want to be but I think I'm there. Are we talking after-factory alterations?"

"Nope. Straight off the line models."

"K."

"A she-male and a womb-man are having sex. Which one's gay? Which one's straight? What are _their_ orientations?"

Wilson admitted, "Kind of a grab bag. Interchangeable parts. Orientation means nothing? So organs have no real influence over sexuality?" Now he was confusing himself.

"Organs have functions, not feelings. It's choice." Greg kissed him. "See? I kissed you instead of picking your nose. Choice."

A car pulled up on the street. Greg, pulling his lips away from James's good looks and supple mouth, glanced through the curtain with mild curiosity.

"_Oh - Christ!" _He said, jumping up.

"Oh, is _He_ here?" Wilson joked, but Greg had gone white, so he sat up too. "What the hell is wrong?"

"My dad's here." Greg searched for and found his shed jeans stepping into them quickly and not bothering with boxers. Any other time it would have given Wilson over to indecent fantasies but he was too freaked by Greg's freaking to daydream about it for more than a second.

Greg ran around the apartment, opening and slamming shut the drawers on his dresser. He found his most respectable shirt and slipped into it, buttoning it as fast as possible. "_Fuck!" _He said aloud. "Son-of-a-_bitch_!" Greg stopped and stared at Wilson sitting calmly on the bed. "What the fuck are you doing?! Get dressed and get your ass outta' here!"

"What-? Why?"

Greg didn't have time to formulate an answer. "I forgot he was coming. You made me forget. Shit!"

It was true. It's what Wilson had been trying to do, but the way Greg said it made it sound like dirty scheming on his part. "What's the big deal? We're friends..."

Greg threw his dirty clothes in a garbage bag and shoved it under the bed along with his wacky-tobaccy paraphernalia and empty whiskey bottles. "Here." He tossed Wilson a quilt obviously made by ma-ma. "Make the bed look like it didn't just partake in sword play."

In all of a minute Greg had transformed his whiskey bottled, Mary-Jane-roach-littered, cum-spattered bachelor pad into a tidy sitting room for the serious student awaiting a visit from dear ol' dad.

A knock at the door had Greg in conniptions but the silent, eye-popping, white knuckle, terrified kind. When Greg swung the door open, Wilson half expected to see a Sasquatch in fatigues standing at attention on the other side.

But it was just Lieutenant Colonel John House. And not dressed in his military uniform but a striped, short sleeve, tie-less dress shirt and shapeless draw string pants the color of straw. "Greg." Was all he said.

It occurred to Wilson that this tall but not overtly overbearing middle-aged man with the greying temples was the horror show that for weeks Greg had been dreading.

XXXX

House, this is God.

--

"Dad." Greg said in a tone striving so painstakingly for polite, Wilson winced.

"Can I come in or have you got a girl in there?"

Greg turned around and froze, staring at Wilson with horror. Wilson looked down at himself. He had forgot to put on a shirt. He cleared his throat. Too late to do it now. He opted for second best and stood to introduce himself, walking over to John House in as manly a fashion as he could...fashion. "Sir. I'm James Wilson. I'm a friend of Greg's. Med' school..." Wilson realized John House was staring in a fixed manner (just like military Colonel would), and he began to babble. "...us, together,..professors and...learning." He coughed to clear a nameless, growing fear. "Um, school."

Greg rubbed his forehead as though he'd just been stricken with a migraine.

"Uh, huh." John House said. But he stared at Wilson's naked chest with questioning eyes. "You're a little old for school, son."

Wilson thought he had never been so politely called a liar, and glanced down at himself. Yup. Still half naked. "Um, sorry, I was about to take a shower." _Shut up, shut up!_

Greg was even whiter now.

John House dismissed Wilson for the moment and asked Greg, "How'r ya', son?"

"Good. I'm good." He stepped back so his father could enter. John House entered and, finding no chairs to sit on, opted to lean against the kitchen counter. "So how are studies?"

Greg crossed his arms and leaned against the counter also but, Wilson noticed, at the very other end. He got the impression that the counter wasn't near long enough to suit Greg. "Fine. Applied for a fellowship."

"Where?"

"Boston."

"Is that the disease thing?"

Greg nodded, "Yeah, yeah, umm, I think my chances are good."

John House nodded.

In a manner so casual it seemed an after-thought, "Where's mom?" Greg asked.

"She's waiting in the car."

For some reason Wilson was so bothered by the weirdness of that he asked, "Is she okay?" She must be ill if she couldn't make it up one set of stairs to visit her son whom she had not seen in what must have been two years.

John House's answer was polite but he sounded irked that the question had even been asked. "She was tired, Greg. She said she'll call you tomorrow."

"I don't have a phone." Was Greg's short answer.

The air in the place was becoming so thick, Wilson found it difficult to breath. And Greg's manner, so UN-Greg, Wilson thought he'd stepped out of the room for a moment and when he'd returned, found his Greg replaced by a timid, bland imitation. Greg seemed unable to formulate any thought that required more than a few words. His characteristic verboseness had scattered like nervous mice.

"Then she'll write." John said and that appeared to cut short the discussion of Greg's mom.

Wilson sniffed the air. He was certain a flaming spear had just been thrust into the ground between John and Greg House. Greg was no longer white but an unhealthy grey and, though it was subtle, Wilson was positive, harshly unhappy. Wilson felt the bewildering urge to flee.

Greg licked his lips. "Sure." Capitulating the first direct hit to his father.

John House suddenly stepped away from the counter and wandered the tiny room. Greg tensed like a kid caught with a stolen candy bar. He nervously watched his father circle the room.

Wilson felt like he was watching two cautiously respectful beasts, like a cobra would respect a mongoose, dancing around each other, looking for a weak spot and ready to strike. Wilson's emotions were fluctuating crazily and he felt an impulse to step into the middle of it, blow a whistle and call a time out. It was weird and uncomfortable and a little frightening.

John sat on the bed, glanced out the window.

Wilson had not failed to notice that though his father had mentioned his wife waiting in the car, Greg had not, as anyone normally would, gone to the window to see her sitting in the car, and perhaps wave or something to his adoring mother. Unless she didn't adore him and if that were true, as soon as John House made his departure he, Wilson, would _adopt_ him.

Greg stayed planted against the kitchen counter, watching his father with tired, anxious eyes. Greg was enduring this visit, Wilson saw. He was suffering through it. There was a ugly and twisted dynamic happening here, and Wilson had been thrust to its center, coldly introduced to something he had no understanding of or control over. He felt exposed and naked (though he had finally donned a shirt). But other than a nervously tapping finger, he didn't twitch.

Marine Dad, remote Mother and miserable son. These three made the Family of House. It was an absurd, irrational, neurotic, lopsided Greek tragedy.

Wilson felt terribly sorry for Greg.

John House pursed his lips, smacked them disapprovingly, looked across the room at Greg and with cool calculation asked, "You boys been sharing more than homework in here?"

Wilson's blood congealed. The audacity - the sheer brashness of the man! - to presume to question his twenty-four year old son about his private sex life. And not only his sex life, but insinuate that if it existed, then it was (in his unforgiving judgment) disgusting, dirty and immoral. Wilson felt like throwing up.

That Greg and he had been intimate was, in Wilson's opinion, irrelevant to the extreme. It was none of the man's goddamn business what Greg did in his bed. It was none of anyone's business!

Greg didn't answer, but his face told Wilson that he had known this was coming. Diplomacy was closed, the war was on.

Greg's silence seemed to fuel John House's determination to break his son down, scrub the filth from him with a potato brush dipped in lyme, rinse him off and stand him up straight again. Greg would then be - in John House's shirt buttoned, bed made just right clean-marine style - proper again. Less human and heart-crushed, but acceptable.

Greg didn't look at his father. He didn't speak.

Wilson's heart was pounding so hard he was sure they could all hear it. He was furious for Greg and wanted to knock the bastard's teeth in. But instead he tried more diplomacy. "Mister House, Greg and I-"

John House threw him a look that would have stopped the tides. "You think I don't know my own son? I can smell a Russian's fart at five hundred yards. You think I don't know the stink of rut?"

Wilson was flabbergasted. "What Greg and I do is-"

Greg suddenly came to life and said to Wilson, "Be quiet! Just...be quiet."

Wilson was too angry, and too protective of Greg, and too in love to ignore his father's cruelty. Determined to answer on Greg's behalf, "Greg and I,...we're not, ...he's not-" But stopped when Greg shouted, "Shut the _fuck_ up, Wilson!"

John House, by his sanctimonious, satisfied look, had scored a hit. Greg looked sick. His insistence that Wilson keep quiet was all the evidence John House needed that his son was screwing a queer. Probably living with one. Probably fucking one every night of the week. Probably even wearing girls clothes and high heels and dancing the dance of the queer and the queen and bringing shame on the family. As expected.

Confession by denial. Guilty by silence. It was the military way.

John House stood and approached his son, not as a father but as a colonel before the ranks. "Your mother will be sick over this."

First the mortar. Now the victory in burning flesh. Wilson had the sneaky suspicion John House had used this tactic on his son before. Mentioning the mother was a point blank dirty shot.

John House shook his head in a "I Figured So" way. "I'll break it to her when we get home. I'm disappointed. What the hell has gotten into you?"

Wilson thought: _nothing and no-one but_ _me._

"Nothing that a nice bath wouldn't fix." Greg said quietly.

John House glared for a few seconds but said nothing more to his one and only son before slipping through the squeaky door and descending down the wobbly wooden stairs. Greg did not go to the window and watch them drive away. What he did do was calmly open the fridge, grab a beer, pop the tab and had a drink. He gulped half of it down in a few swallows.

Wilson realized that he'd fucked everything up somehow. "I'm sorry-"

"Yeah." Greg said. "If you'd kept your mouth shut, he would have let it go. He was testing me out,..see if I'd fulfilled his worst fears of me while he'd been away. He was ready to let it go until you opened your mouth."

Greg wasn't using the word _Dad, _Wilson noticed."I was just trying to-"

"I know. It doesn't matter. Thanks for trying."

"What do you mean by "let it go"? Was this,..was he-?"

"He had no idea we've been fucking. It was a guess, a shot in the dark. He just wanted to make me squirm. He's a marine. He has to be in control of every situation." Greg finished his beer and popped another. "Well, he won that one I guess."

Greg was not upset, or was drawing on every remaining reserve of strength to appear that way. Wilson asked, "What are you going to do?"

"Not gonna' do shit. I don't give a fuck what he thinks."

Wilson knew that probably wasn't true. A son's dad is the first and most influential man in a boy's life. If the dad fucked his fathering up, the _kid_ lived with it the rest of his life. "But, your mom..."

"He won't tell her and even if he does, she won't believe him."

Wilson was grieved to his marrow to hear Greg's next and final word on the matter. Speaking of his mother who had declined even seeing him, "She's mostly on my side."

That evening, Greg disappeared and was gone for three days.

XXXXXXX

YOU REALLY DON'T NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYBODY.

--

Wilson didn't see Greg, not at his apartment or at the bar until he finally showed up one night at Carl's after Wilson's shift was done. Wilson's relief at seeing him could have been photographed.

Greg seemed his old self. Almost as usual. Over the next couple of days it became apparent that he had shook off his father's visit like rain off a hat. Out of curiosity and with Wilson on the back of the Kawasaki, he drove to the Rodeway to check out the fire damage. The place was dark and no real clean up had begun.

Wilson said, "I checked the phone book down at the corner store. There's a couple of hotels not too far from here, and a motel out on the highway that's the right price."

Greg nodded but did not drive to any of them. Instead he drove to and parked in front of Nana's Café, beckoning Wilson inside. "Come on. I'm hungry."

Wilson bought them both lunch of Reubens and fries. Greg sipped a coke to help wash it down. "So I've been thinking. Maybe you could just crash at my place for a while?"

Wilson hesitated, but not because he didn't love the idea. He wanted to make sure of one thing. "So...should I go buy another bed or...what?"

Greg lit a cigarette. He smoked too much. And drank too much. And drove his Kawasaki too fast...

But he was sexy, smart, endlessly interesting and gorgeous and Wilson wanted him so badly he could taste it more strongly than the damn Reuben.

"Maybe when we wear mine out." Greg answered.

Wilson imagined that wouldn't take too long at all. "Has this anything to do with-?"

"Sex? Fifty percent." Greg finished and answered the question all at once. "Thirty percent I like your cooking."

"What's the other twenty?"

"Miscellaneous."

"Thanks - that's a relief. Just as long as it has nothing to do with the fact that you like me."

"You wish."

Wilson ordered coffee from the waitress and Greg a piece of cherry pie. There was one thing about earlier that week during the battle between the two Houses that Wilson wanted to understand. "Why didn't your mom come up?" He hoped Greg wouldn't be too pissed at his nosiness.

"Dad told her not to."

"And that's it? He speaks, she jumps or doesn't?"

"They've been married twenty-five years. He's a marine lieutenant colonel. Eats hookers and homosexuals for breakfast. She's the wife of a marine lieutenant colonel. She's timid, quiet, nice, bakes cookies for local soup kitchens. Sends me knitted scarves in winter and cotton socks in summer and little white bibles through-out the year. She loves my dad, she loves me, and she has no backbone at all. That's her world."

"You love her though?"

"Of course, she's my mom." Greg answered as though that was explanation enough. Not unsurprisingly, John being his dad wasn't enough. Not by a hell of a mile.

"Will you see him again?"

"I'll hear from him. He'll make me pay for being the terrible, fag-shagging disappointment that I am."

"Make you pay? But he already" Wilson did little rabbit ear quotes in the air, ""won", didn't he?"

"It has to be real or he didn't win anything. That was just a cold war, Jimmy. An illusion. Practice."

How seriously fucked up. Wilson sipped his coffee. "Is this "payment" coming because of me?"

"No. Always because of me."

"What do you think he'll do?"

"Make my life miserable for a while somehow."

"You don't seem worried."

Greg shrugged. "Meh..."

And one last query that about something that, at the time, had made no sense what-so-ever. "What was the bath tub comment all about?"

Greg finished his coke and pie. "Jeeze, enough already. My dad's an ass hole, okay?"

XX

John House's deep assholishness manifested itself one day in an announcement from Greg over a Wilson home cooked breakfast. "Dad cut me off."

Wilson was so surprised to hear about John House (in truth he had done his best to thrust the thoroughly disagreeable man from his mind), that he stopped chewing his toast for a moment. "What do you mean?" He asked through a spray of jam coated crumbs.

Sitting on the bed with his plate, Greg bisected a runny egg yolk. "I mean he cut me off. No more money." He dipped his toast and sopped up the yellow delight.

"Are you saying you won't be able to finish or go to Boston?" Wilson was ashamed to secretly hope for just that.

"No. The funds for the last tuition went through just fine. I mean living expenses. He was helping with that. Now he's not."

Wilson was really beginning to hate the fucker. "You'll be fine." He'd make sure of it.

"I'll have to get another part time job."

Wilson knew it would be a struggle for him to get studies done, attend lectures, write his final papers, plus find time for those occasionally necessary things like sleeping, showering and eating in between thirty-six hour straight intern shifts. "I'll make it up."

Greg shook his head without even considering it. "No you won't."

Wilson stared, a trifle miffed at his stubbornness. "I've been living with you for over two weeks and you haven't asked me for anything. I've got the money, I can afford it."

Greg was reluctant, and ashamed that he needed the help, but knew he hadn't a choice. It was either that or forego sleep for the next seven months. "Okay. Thanks."

"No problem." Wilson grinned. "The fringes at Hotel Gregory are worth every penny."

XXX

Wilson was terribly grateful for Greg's offer to stay with him. The sterile, depressing hotel room was no home away from home. Greg's apartment had become his peaceful refuge in the present out-of-control circumstances of his life. Most nights, one or the other worked, studied, interned, or worked some more. And some nights and the occasional afternoon, they'd have hot, sweaty, gropping, lusting, incredible sex.

How much money Greg needed was a paltry sum for Wilson with his two jobs plus tips.

"Thirty a week will do it." Greg had told him.

Wilson gave him sixty to give Greg some wiggle room and insisted on buying the food too, since he was the one who was going to cook it.

Wilson kept the tiny fridge and cupboard stocked. He purchased a very small wheeled cupboard with a cutting board built-in on the top and pushed it into the only naked corner of the kitchen, banishing the dry goods from the counter into it's interior. He made simple and delicious meals. The way Greg dug in, he wondered when the last decent meal had passed into the man's stomach without having first soaked in it's own juices in a tin can for a year or so. Wilson had announced. "No more scotch and peanut butter sandwich dinners."

With Wilson's help financially, and his sexual ministrations almost nightly, Greg seemed to relax and fell into a routine of study and spending time with Wilson. Which Wilson appreciated very much. And Greg's dad's looming peripheral shadow seemed to fade from Greg's world also. About which Wilson was delighted.

That night he initiated one of his favorite love-making routines by pushing Greg flat on the bed, sticking his head playfully under the edge of Greg's t-shirt and nibbling his stomach. Greg habitually reached for the whiskey bottle he kept beneath the bed. Wilson took it from his hand. "You won't need that." He kissed his lips. "I want you to remember everything I do to you tonight. And I'm going to do so many things to you." And he undressed him one article of clothing at a time, deliberately drawing out the process, until Greg was nude. They made love for hours.

As Wilson awoke the next morning, Greg nudged him and Wilson groaned. Greg's penis was ready again after a night of idling, but Wilson's was still in shut down and parked in the garage. "Goddamn, you're insatiable." He said as Greg rolled on top of him.

"Who followed who into the shower?"

Wilson smiled, so very glad that he had, and he playfully flipped Greg onto his back and kissed him, trying to stifle a yawn. "Classes today?"

"Lectures."

"Work tonight?"

"Um-huh." Greg tried to steal kisses from Wilson's kips, but Wilson pulled back and raised himself onto his elbows, studying Greg's face with intense interest and admiration - he simply loved it.

Greg sighed impatiently. "Are you going to fuck me or what?"

"Of course I'm going to fuck you. _Seriously_ going to fuck you. But I have a question."

Greg went limp. "Oh, here we go."

Wilson smiled at him adoringly but then his smile fell and he quietly asked, "What did he do to you?"

Greg's contentment ran away from his face.

Wilson waited as he watched Greg's features shift a little, and he knew Greg was deciding whether to answer or shove him off and have himself a beer instead. He also suspected that John House had abused Greg somehow. Wilson had always suspected that Greg House had been mistreated as a youth. A man with so much difficulty interacting socially or opening up or trusting anyone can hardly have experienced a healthy childhood, boyhood world travels not-with-standing. Something about House had always struck him as "off". As so with this young Greg as well.

Greg shifted beneath him, emotionally uncomfortable with the trail the conversation was taking. "Does it matter?"

"I want to know if someone has hurt you. Or _is_ hurting you."

"There's nothing you can do about it."

"You don't know that for sure."

Greg sighed. "You're interrupting the best part of my day to talk about the worst part of my life."

"I'm irritating and pushy and demanding as well. But I'm also laying on top of you ready to screw your good-looking brains out."

Greg bit his lip. "Fine. But if I tell you, will you get on with fucking me like an rowdy orangutang?"

Wilson frowned at Greg's chosen image of his screwing skills but, "Ye-a-h. Sure."

Greg cleared his throat, turning his head to look out the window at the end of the bed. He didn't turn his eyes back to Wilson for his entire narrative. "He wasn't home much but when he was things were his way or the highway. No mistakes. Don't fail, don't screw up, or you spend a night sleeping in the yard with one blanket to keep you company or..." Greg cleared his throat again. "...get a bath in ice-water. With real ice."

Wilson listened with a churning fire in his stomach and a knife through his heart. _You._ Not once had Greg said _I. _He removed himself from the picture as he spoke. Wilson found it difficult to breath at the heart-rending image of Greg as a boy being humiliated and physically tortured (isolation in the dark and cold, and ice-water baths are tortures), because he had made a "mistake".

Wilson forced the question passed the ache in his chest and the lump in his throat. "What kind of mistakes?"

Greg, eyes on the bright outdoors, "Forgetting to rake the leaves, not cleaning my room like my mother asked, being late after school, talking back, not making the team..."

"Jesus H. Christ. How old were you?"

"Started when I was about five..."

_Old enough,_ Wilson thought, _for a boy to start forming his own opinions._

"...lasted until I was thirteen or fourteen."

_Tall enough, maybe, and strong enough to tell the prick to fuck off. _Wilson decided: Yes, he really hated that fucker."And your mom,...?"

"Sometimes she could talk him out of it, most times not."

"Why didn't she take you and leave?"

Greg looked at him like he was from another planet. "And go where? She was a woman with a child and no job skills other than being the wife of an overbearing marine who, asshole or no, adored her. Dad provided a good living."

Wilson thought, _No excuse. No excuse to stand by and watch your husband torture your son for nearly ten years. _"What happened after that?"

Greg looked tired now and was breathing erratically. But he still did not look back at Wilson. Greg related cold facts like a stenographer. "Nothing. He'd tell me to do something and if I didn't want to do it, end of confrontation. Later...mom had sort of a nervous break-down. I wasn't living at home then. I tried to reconcile with him to help her."

Wilson ended the questions and instead kissed him tenderly. Used sweet kisses to tuck the memories back down into the dark place where Greg kept them. John House had abused and humiliated his only son and the damage was evident.

But wasn't everyone damaged? Wilson thought of his own missing brother. Yes, all people were hurt in some way sometime during their lives. But there were degrees. Was one a fender-bender or a train wreck? Greg, Wilson thought, fell somewhere in between.

Of Greg's father, Wilson said, "I'd like to kill that son-of-a-bitch." For Greg, Wilson kissed him all over and then made love to him.

XXXXX

I ASSOCIATE WITH YOU THROUGH CHOICE..

--

When Greg's dad's money stopped coming, as he said it would, Greg disappeared again. Wilson, not so much bothered by these disappearing acts (other House used to do that occasionally. It was his way of taking a break from people), but was bothered by _this_ one because it was finally made clear to him where Greg went.

This time Greg came home around two in the morning. Wilson woke up when he heard the door creak open and the rustling of shedding clothing. Soft light from the fridge glowed through his eyelids. He heard a beer can open with a fizz and the gurgles of Greg gulping it down. Greg had been drinking a lot more lately. The fridge closed and stumbling, uncertain feet made their way to the bed. Wilson felt the bed dip and shake as Greg climbed under the covers and wrapped his chilled, damp limbs all over his own warm skin, making him shiver. It had rained almost all night and Greg had evidently been out riding in it.

By the odor of alcohol, wet clothes, drying sex and a woman's perfume, that's not all Greg had been riding. Wilson felt a jolt of shock, pain and jealousy at the revelation that Greg had just spent most of the evening having sex with a woman. That Greg had slept with a woman didn't matter that much but that he'd slept with anyone did. Anyone _else_.

Wilson listened to Greg's breathing even out as he fell into a deep whiskey lubricated sleep, and to his own heart beating fast with resentment. Greg was straight. Wilson knew that. He shouldn't be surprised that the urge to bed a woman would surface in Greg from time to time. But all the same it hurt.

XX

"Have fun last night?" Wilson asked him over coffee the next morning. Morning being eleven-thirty. Greg was busy zipping up his jeans and slipping one of a dozen T-shirts that he owned over his mussy hair. He ran a few fingers through it and for him that was enough fussing.

Wilson had watched Greg once or thrice as he tried to shape and tease his hair into a more behaving, less child-like style. Then Wilson would watch, amused, as the hair slowly rebelled, returning to its untamed state. Wilson didn't mind. It lent Greg an almost-not-there tilt of neediness. Greg was so assured, so independent and self reliant, Wilson was most times afraid to step over that invisible circle Greg took everywhere he went that announced to the populace: Leave me the hell alone - _I'm fine!_

Greg gathered his papers and books. "It was okay."

Wilson put his cup in the sink and turned, leaned against the counter, crossing his arms. Defensive posture, he knew, but he felt defensive. And angry. He knew he shouldn't ask, shouldn't push it but couldn't help his mouth. It seemed to be moving to its own purpose. "Who was she?"

Greg paused, sensing the fight coming like an deer smelling the cougar. "A friend." A very clipped, House-ish answer.

Wilson heard the elevated irritation in the words. Wilson knew from experience that Greg was silently preparing a quick and brutal defense. So Wilson just nodded, dropping it.

Greg gave him a look Wilson could only describe as half-satisfied/half sorry. "I don't remember us exchanging rings." He said quietly with no hint of sarcasm at all.

Wilson nodded again. Of course that was true, they were just having sex. Greg was not his lover. Wilson corrected it - Greg was _his_ lover. _He_ wasn't Greg's. He wasn't anyone's. Wilson was just the unexpected, useful and sometimes fun room-mate who really liked fucking Greg. That is, whenever the urge presented in both of them at the same time.

This was a _lust_ affair.

"Don't go falling in love with me." Greg warned, but not unkindly, and lit a cigarette.

Wilson followed suite, looking at him and not being able to help the disappointment pass over his own face. He _was _in love. No denial or doubt. "I can't help it. We're living together and you take off to bang some woman while sleeping with me. I deserve some consideration. Unless I'm just here for the rent money." He looked at Greg, challenging him to speak the truth. "Am I that? Just rent money and an convenient fuck?"

Greg sighed. "Why does this have to be such a heavy deal? Can't it...just be _fun_?"

"It's gone beyond that for me. I think...I think I love you."

Greg caught the words and the expression on Wilson's face, gleaning that it was truth. "You shouldn't." He said, somewhat sadly, but not elaborating.

"Why? Because your dad was a mean son-of-a-prick who tortured you? So somehow you believe that means you deserve to be unhappy? He didn't love you. So you think you must have not earned it, or were born imperfect or just weren't _good_ enough? It's not true. He was a fuck! He was wrong!"

Greg heaved a huge sigh. "Christ, what is it with you? You should have gone into psychiatry, you love talking it all the time."

Wilson asked, "Why did you stop at the bench that day? Sit down beside me? Talk to me?"

Greg shifted his cigarette from his hand to his mouth and looked off out the door's screen window. He shrugged. "My feet hurt."

"Give me a real answer please."

Greg looked at him and sucked in the deadly smoke. "You were a mystery; a puzzle. I wanted to figure you out."

"That's it?"

"You think there was more? Maybe the gods or Fate or Santa Clause brought us together, that we were meant to be, all that shit?"

Wilson butted out his own cigarette in the sink. "I don't know. But something sure as hell brought me to you. I can't explain how or why and even if I knew and told you, you'd never believe me or you'd humor me but secretly think me crazy."

"Oh, well that clears it right up." Greg almost laughed but set his lip instead.

Wilson asked, "You don't feel anything for me? Nothing? Not a good ache in your heart or even a bad one? I'm just Wilson: pretty good fuck; gives you money; makes tasty meals?"

Greg licked his lips. "I...don't...I think I feel...something. I don't know what...I'm...it's..._fuck_..." He sighed again, tired of the emotional confrontation. "But I can't do anything about what _you _feel." He moved to the apartment door. "I...don't know what else to tell you."

Wilson decided to say what he'd been wanting to since meeting John House, Prick-Dad. "Your dad's convinced you that you're worthless. So now, to prove wrong a man who's opinion means shit, that you're not who he says you are, you're going to sleep with every pussy you can get your dick into? That hurts you, not him." Lastly, "And it hurts me."

"If this living situation isn't to your liking anymore, we can make a change." Greg said, challenging Wilson to call or fold.

Wilson nodded again, looked at his bare feet. "Sometimes things happen that we can't prevent. Or control." _Like me loving you beyond what normal reason would dictate. Like you screwing someone else while fucking the person you're living with who's hopelessly in love with you. _"And, no, I don't want to move out."

"Don't try to keep me confined to a picture in your head or make me into something you need but nothing I want."

"Never." Wilson said. "Please be careful. I don't want to lose you. I'm not sure I could live if anything happened to you." Even to his own ears, it sounded melodramatic and a little ridiculous.

"Gotta' go." Greg gathered up his back pack and prepared to leave. He paused at the door, then leaned over to where Wilson was standing and planted a kiss on his mouth. It was so unexpected Wilson almost jumped. It also made no sense.

"Greg." Wilson stopped him one last time before his lover made good his escape. "Stop fucking every skirt who'll have you. Stop trying to prove to your macho marine dad that you're just like him. I'm thanking God every day that you're not. And I'm sorry saying I love you makes you uncomfortable. But this time I'm not going to hide the way I feel. I won't make that mistake again. Your father's the fuck-up, Greg - forget him. I love you. Let _that_ mean something."

Greg House. Wilson was nuts for a man who made him crazy.

The second time Greg disappeared and came home smelling like a woman, Wilson didn't say a word. The pattern went on for several weeks. Then it seemed to just...end. Greg stopped going out, and again seemed content to have his fleshly needs taken care of by Wilson's more than anxious mouth, hands and cock.

XXXXXX

Guilt can be your friend.

--

One day there was a knock at the door and when Wilson opened it, he felt the urgent need to hide the beer and run.

Greg's dad, dressed in civilian clothes, stared at Wilson. Greg, thank god, was not there but doing another thirty-six hour intern shift. He would come home, Wilson knew, drained. Then peel off his clothes, climb into bed and sleep for twelve hours or more. Wilson would join him at the appropriate hour of the evening (or just whenever he felt like it), and wrap his arms around him. He'd softly kiss his shoulder, gently rub his back or caress his stomach but not so to wake him up. Only to make him feel good. To extend affection and receive the pleasure of giving it to him.

It was a sensual apartment-bound holiday. A right-damn paradise on a sagging mattress.

Wilson stared stupidly but at least he was fully dressed this time. He stood there with a book in his hand and his reading glasses tipped on the edge of his nose. Finally he got a few syllables out, "Mister House..." His voice squeaked a bit and he hated that he sounded nervous.

John House looked at him only for a second, then craned his neck inside to see if Greg was home. "My son here?"

"No. He's at...he's doing an intern shift." Then, hoping Daddy House would take the hint and leave, added "- a long one."

"Oh." Marine House's voice said nothing. His words meant nothing. John House was a sealed container with a label that said: Open only in case of war.

"May I help you?" Wilson asked, not wanting to in the least.

"It's his mother's birthday this weekend. Maybe he forgot."

Right. Wilson thought. Whenever Greg spoke of his mother, a little as he did, it was always with a shy affection and infallible kindness. No chance in hell Greg had forgot his mother's birthday.

"She'll expect him to come." John House added, the hidden implication dropped at Wilson's feet like a grenade. _You, James Wilson, my son's homo-mate are not welcome._

Wilson didn't care to attend the birthday dinner. He didn't particularly care that he was not invited_. _"I'll be sure to tell him you dropped in." The only thing he cared about was Greg having to spend a weekend in the presence of this asshole.

As strong as he was, as determined to be independent as he was, Greg became..._unsteady_ somehow, around his father. Wilson had seen it that first time John House had visited, if it could have been called that. Greg seemed to shrink before this cool, disapproving man. Despite his hate for his father, Greg wanted, desperately needed, his dad's approval. All sons need their father's love and affirmation.

But from John House? Wilson had only met the man twice and already he honestly didn't think Greg would ever receive it. Poor Greg.

"I'm sure he'll be there." Wilson answered.

Wilson tagged along as Greg spent Saturday morning shopping for a gift for his mother. In the third gift shop, he considered and rejected several items, then settled on a beautiful crystal carving in the shape of a rain drop fired with a blue swan in it's center. The gift was at least three pounds of lead-portioned crystal and far pricier than he could actually afford. Wilson made a mental note to up this weeks contribution to their mutual living arrangements. Greg had the helpful lady behind the counter (who praised his choice, beaming flirting teeth at him) wrap it beautifully.

Wilson did not attended Greg's mom's birthday and Greg did not ask him to go. Wilson felt sure it would have been awful anyway. He could just imagine the homo-jokes and the humiliations that would have been heaped on Greg. John House would be careful to keep such remarks well hidden from his wife. He'd denounce Greg's sexual activities and his life-style and his past mistakes and his failure to become a macho marine and criticize Greg in general, wrap it all up in neat traditional American family values, and present it to him as "Greg's best interests". It would be tense and awkward, stifling and depressing. And in Greg's family, this was something _fun._ If Blyth suspected anything, she'd play peace-keeper and pour everyone another useless cup of tea.

Greg returned to the apartment with a piece of cake his mom insisted he take home for Wilson. He put it in the fridge quietly, looking ill. He drank three beers and said nothing beyond "It was fine." Which meant of course it hadn't been.

With a sinking heart, Wilson watched Greg slip his jacket back on and without another word roar off on his rattling Kawasaki with the hole in its muffler. He came home the next morning stinking of booze and so drunk he could hardly walk. A different perfume this time wafted off his skin as Greg climbed into bed, wrapping his arms around Wilson and holding on as though Wilson were a human life-raft. Perhaps he was.

Wilson turned toward him and drew him into a deep and insistent kiss. Greg responded and soon they were at each others bodies like fumbling teenagers, all hands and tongues, each taking the other without remorse.

At one point Wilson rolled over on top of Greg and pinned his arms to his sides, kissing him relentlessly, wanting to sluice out the saliva and the taste of the other from Greg's mouth. He moved his pelvis in tiny circles against Greg's genitalis, determined to rub away her smell and replace it with his own musk. Releasing Greg's arms, Wilson caressed and kissed and sucked at his smooth skin until no faint hint of her odor remained on Greg's body. Until Wilson's essence surrounded and soaked into his skin.

Then Wilson did something he had never done before to Greg nor Greg to him. He, ever so slowly and with perfect gentleness, raised Greg's legs up to his sides, bending them, then pushed them until his knees were lying on either side of his shoulders. Wilson then greased his hand up with lube, and with delicate finesse, penetrated Greg's anus with one finger, then two, then three, stretching him until he started to relax. Teasing, Wilson pushed deeper and started tickling his prostate until Greg was whimpering, his body jerking from the electric-like shocks that traveled up and down his spine. _A new pleasure_, Wilson thought smiling, _and I'm giving it to him._

It was time then, and Wilson lubed up his own cock and slowly shoved it, in by exquisite inch, into Greg's tight hot depths until his cock was swallowed to the hilt. The feeling, the rush, the sexual ardentry, the forbidden fruit high of it made Wilson moan like a slut. "Ah-h-h-h...my-god-_jesus_!...Greg, ..oh baby...I'm,...going to fuck you so _goddamn_ _HARD_!" But take his time doing it.

Wilson began to move very slowly, pulling out, not all the way, then pushing back in. Very slowly, he began to oscillate his sips in tantalizing circles, making the movements larger until he could feel Greg's response in his convulsive tightening of his sphincter muscles. Wilson pulled out, pushed in, moved his cock in every possible physical direction so to access every previously untouched portion of Greg's insides. Then he sped up his movements, striking Greg's prostate in a steady rhythm that made Greg squirm and gasp and clutch at his strong back with both hands, clawing, fingers trying to find a hand hold to brace himself. It was instinctive reaction to the unusual invasion, the sensations for both all new and mind-blowing and hot and fucking fantastic.

Wilson quickly lubed up Greg's swollen cock and let it slide around between his own stomach and Greg's. And even that was new and amazing. Anything Gregory was worth a try. - the pay off - incredible! Like irresistible animal-brain sex. Only it was young, soft, beautiful, hot Gregory fucking. Wilson would never stop doing this to him as long as he lived. He would screw Greg at every remotely possible place and every opportunity. He would deep-cock-fuck him forever.

Wilson could hardly control himself as Greg moved and whimpered and groaned under him. With a softly primeval cry, Wilson fucked Greg faster and harder, jerking his body up and down savagely, the bed scraping back and forth on the thin carpet. Then in the inevitable home stretch of witless sexual ecstasy, Wilson pumped him as hard as possible; for all he was worth; like a man possessed. The release inside him was building and building in his balls like a roller-coaster on it's final climb, until he was tightly gripping Greg's hair so Greg could not move, or stop this or escape. Then Wilson was sucking at him, bruising his face with his teeth and yelling sexual obscenities into his mouth. With a violent shudder, Wilson came hard and long, growling in Greg's ear, "Greggreggreg,...Take my cum - all of it! Every bit - oh, _fuck_ - _**take it!"**_

_**A**_ few seconds later Greg came too with a wavering moan that made Wilson shiver with delight, Greg spilling his warm cum between their two skins. Wilson lay still, thrilling in the sensation of Greg's still twitching but spent cock and that he - Wilson - had caused this; brought Greg to this moment. Wilson loved knowing that he had thoroughly fucked him, filled him up, marked him. Owned the part of Greg no other had ever touched. Taken Greg to sexual places _she_ would never be able to! Wilson knew Greg's flesh in a more complete and deliciously wicked way.

Wilson had planted his flag in Greg's virgin soil and claimed him in the name of his own cock. He'd screwed possessively, leaving young Greg limp and submissive.

Greg's semen was spreading out between their stomachs, binding them together and even that was a feeling like no other. Wilson would forget none of it. Not a kiss, not a touch, not a caress, not a molecule of spurting cum, not a single breath from Greg's mouth on his skin. As far as Wilson was concerned, Greg was his.

He looked down at Greg who was looking up at him with those matchless, azure, cock-sucking perfect eyes, so satiated with pleasure and so beautiful they seemed ethereal.

Wilson kissed him very softy. "I'll bet she never did _that_ to you." He whispered.

XXXXXX

Just looking at you hurts

--

The last time Greg saw his dad as far (as Wilson knew), was just before he finished medical school and five weeks before his start date at Boston General.

John and Blyth House arranged to meet Greg at a restaurant to give him a graduation present. This time Greg asked Wilson if he would come and he agreed.

Dressed in his good pants and an ironed dress shirt, Wilson felt he looked presentable enough to stare down any bull shit John House might throw his way. Greg put on jeans and a T-shirt in direct defiance of his father and the occasion. Blyth wouldn't care. John would see it as evidence that Greg had no respect for authority, him or things that mattered.

They all huddled into a booth at a local Perkins's and talked the talk of We're in a public place and this is a celebration so let's be nice and not cause a scene just this once. Blyth looked at her son as though she'd swallowed the sunshine. John was a thick cloud hanging off to the east, black with rain.

"Dear," Blyth began, addressing the apple of her eye, "tell us about your new job."

Greg explained that it wasn't really a job, just a fellowship, but a chance for him to learn more in depth the specialties he was interested in: Nephrology and Infectious Disease.

"But you get paid don't you?" Was John's question.

Greg's forehead wrinkled - the first time Wilson had noticed any lines there at all - "'Course." he answered. "Just not a lot. Nothing near a doctor's wage."

"Well, when will you?" John House valued a tidy bank account, that was obvious.

"In a few years." Greg drank his coffee, hardly ever raising his eyes off the rim of his cup. Wilson watched Greg and remembered the bright-eyed, strong, sexy confidant man he had made love to the night before. If only John House could see _that_ man. That man, though, Wilson liked having all to himself.

Blyth never stopped smiling through the coffee's, the celebratory wine, the expensive meal that Greg hardly touched or the dessert that Greg declined altogether. Wilson picked at his food and tried to will the horrid evening to a merciful end. John House looked his way as little as possible. He did when Wilson mentioned his plans to re-enter his profession. John hadn't bothered to ask what that was and cut off Blyth when she tried to.

Then when Wilson cleared his throat and wondered aloud where the washrooms were. He had a keen desire to escape the thick distaste emanating from the elder House when ever he looked over at Wilson, which was almost never.

"Ladies's room is over there." John had quipped. Greg's face, Wilson was touched to see, darkened at his father's implied insult and he asked his dad, "How did you find out?"

John House shut his mouth and, once the excruciating celebration was closed with proper, manly handshakes, and Blyth gave her son a kiss and hug only a mother can give, the two couples parted ways.

Out in the fresh evening air, away from the tension you could cut with a cheese knife, Wilson breathed in a huge lung full to try and clear his head. He felt as though he'd just climbed off a thirty minute treatment on the Drop of Doom at Disney World.

Greg's solution to the oppressive evening was, "Let's go get drunk."

Wilson had a rare morning shift at his second job. "Sorry. Can't. Cooking for other drunks calls. Drop me off?"

Greg did and rode away. When he didn't return to pick Wilson up, he walked the half hour home and worried about Greg until passed midnight. Then fighting to keep his eyes open, he went to sleep in his clothes not bothering with the covers.

Greg returned drunk, staggering in, silent, his breathing all nasal and snort. Wilson smelled the liquor but this time no perfume. He heard the kitchen tap running and Greg splashing in the dark. He hadn't switched on the kitchen light in a vain attempt not to wake Wilson. The running water, clogged breathing and nose-snorting had already done the job. The snuffling in particular made Wilson sit up and take notice. He turned on the bedside light.

Greg was standing with his head over the sink, splashing water on his face. Wilson walked over and glanced over Greg's shoulder. The water was running red into the drain. "What the hell-?" Wilson took his shoulders and made him straighten up. Greg flinched at Wilson's sudden appearance but not at his touch.

"What _happened_ to you?" Wilson switched on the flourescent the light above the two burner stove, bathing Greg's already pale face into a color resembling plaster of Paris.

Greg, swaying from the drink or the bloody nose, the cut above his left eye or bruised cheekbone, opened a split lip and articulated a emphatically to the point answer, "Bar fight."

Wilson sighed. "Were you the practice round?"

That for some reason darkened Greg's white face and he shook off Wilson's hands. "I got my few in." He leaned in to Wilson so he was right in his face. "I'm not a homo' you know!" And pushed away from Wilson, navigating his drunken feet on a meandering expedition to the bed.

Wilson knew why Greg was drunk. Knew why he had come to a finger's width from getting his lights knocked out. Understood Greg was hurting; his confusion which lived along-side his hate, mixed with despair, strewn with need for approval, all coated with a desperate and frustrating love for his cold, remote, military trained and polished, former physically and mentally torturing, presently verbally abusive and deriding father - John House. A caged animal looks to its keeper, first for food, then for the rare touch of a hand, then for the life behind bars it's confined to, simply because it knows nothing else.

John House had imprisoned his son in an invisible, perpetual penalty box. He was hemmed in by self-loathing that perplexed him yet fighting wildly to break out and tell his dad to take a long, high, flying fuck. Greg didn't understand any of it. But he fought against it in the only way his young and inexperienced self knew how: to get drunk, to be beat up, to become the disappointment his father has always hinted he was. Greg has been beating his fists against the bars his whole life.

Greg hated his dad. He loved his dad. He had no idea if his dad felt anything for him at all. Wilson muttered under his breath about the dad, "Fucking son-of-a-bitch."

Greg was slumped on the edge of the bed, carefully fingering his cuts and bruises and trying to remove his sneakers without untying them (without much success).

Wilson knelt down and did it for him, slipping the runners off one at a time, then his socks, laying them all neatly aside. He, being mindful of Greg's injuries, carefully slipped his t-shirt over his head, revealing the chest Wilson loved so much it made his groin ache. But he could see the many red splotches that were blushes now, but would transform into fist-shaped blue and purple bruises by tomorrow. Wilson counted seven. Some two hundred, fifteen pound steroid-fed, beer belly bar hero had pummeled drunk Greg but good.

"These are going to hurt like hell tomorrow." Wilson retrieved three acetaminophen tablets and two ibuprofen along with a glass of water from the bathroom. "Here."

Greg popped the pills in a ghostly portrait of the other House and Wilson felt a small stab of guilt. He had not thought of his House for months.

But this man, beaten up and fingers defeated by his belt that wouldn't obey his clumsy hands to unhook - (_dammit!_ his expression said), _was_ him, wasn't he? Wilson had given up the debate at about the same time, too. The solution was a stalemate anyway, as his own life almost had been.

Wilson gently brushed Greg's hands aside and unbuckled it for him, helping him slide the jeans off. He left the boxers on. Greg's legs were covered in red splotches too. Lots of them. "Jesus Christ, he was kicking you??"

Greg lay down. "They."

_Oh my god Greg. What are you doing to yourself?_ But Wilson just covered him with a blanket and turned off the bedside light. He'd have to keep an eye on those bruises. For all he knew Greg was sporting a hair-line fracture or torn muscle somewhere but was too pickled to feel it just yet.

His young lover snored softly. "He's not worth it, Greg." Wilson said. "Why are you so determined to prove wrong a man who _is_ wrong? You don't have to be like him. You don't have to be anyone but yourself. Yourself is fine. Your_self_ is what I love."

XXX

Sure, what could possibly go wrong?

--

Before either them could blink twice, the last week before Greg was to leave for Boston was upon them and Wilson was heartsick. Greg would be packing away his books and putting on his crisp, new doctor's coat and heading off to his new and interesting life. And Wilson would be cooking greasy food at Carl's.

Greg hadn't spoken about it. Not a word. Wilson assumed Greg would move there permanently and that would be it for the pleasant living arrangement.

A week before his departure, Greg stepped out into the alley behind Carl's for a smoke with Wilson. "Look," he said. "I've been thinking. Boston's an expensive town. I applied a while back for a room at the Residences."

Typical of him not to have breathed a word.

"And it would make money sense,..." Interns, which is what he would be for three years, made lousy money, "...for me to come home weekends."

Wilson almost jumped up and whooped. But instead calmly drew on his smoke. "That'd be great." He would only have seen Greg every few weeks or so had Greg opted for his own Boston apartment. Then there would have been parties, new friends, dates with women. No more tiny crappy apartment, no more sweltering summer days spent in a single room with one small window. No winter nights so icy you could see your breath in the bathroom and soon, he had feared, no more Wilson.

"And,.." Greg continued awkwardly, like a man not used to asking for anything for himself from anyone, "...maybe eventually, when you get your ID stuff done, you... could come to Boston? We could..maybe...find a place...together? Share?" Then he said very quietly for fear if the question were actually heard the "no" he was expecting would come too quickly and hurt too much. "Live together maybe?"

Wilson didn't care if anyone was watching. He didn't care if they were in a public place. He didn't give a shit who else cared he was sleeping with a man. With_ this _gorgeous, unbelievably sexy, endlessly fascinating man. _They_ should be so lucky!

Wilson stepped up to him and planted a hungry kiss on his smoke-flavored lips. "Of-course-fucking-yes!" And kissed him again. Greg's half embarrassed, half shy smile was so endearing it made his heart ache.

Living with Greg in Boston as he started what Wilson knew would be an amazing career and life? It would be more than great. It would be almost but not quite perfect. Perfect would be Greg never having to suffer-

Wilson paused, his thoughts freezing in the revelation of sudden knowledge so clear he felt an ass for not having thought of it before: Greg would never have to suffer! Because the damage from the infarction would never occur!

He, Wilson knew the hour and day it happened. He might not be able to prevent the actual aneurism or the clot but he _could_ prevent the delay in diagnosis that led to Greg House almost losing his leg to massive muscle death.

- The decision to cut a third of the muscles out would never have to be made.

- The ill-advised decision to leave in the damaged nerves that would never regenerate or heal and curse him with daily agony for the rest of his life would never happen.

- Stacey wouldn't even _be_ there to make the decision to cripple Greg. She would never be there at _all. Ever_.

He, Wilson would be. He'd be present at every critical moment and guide events so Greg would never have to live as a crippled. Never need a cane. Never suffer the god-awful pain.

Wilson was light headed from joy at the realization. Greg would live not only with him and be in his bed every night, but he would live in health and happiness. He would walk and play golf and basketball and run every day like he used to. Greg House would be whole again. He'd be free.

Naturally Wilson said none of this to Greg whom he had just kissed. It would remain his wonderful magic box. It would be his marvelous secret gift to his friend and lover.

Wilson looked at Greg. _God, he loved him so much!_ Wilson felt infused with the power of what he could do for him. He would protect Greg from the tragedy that had marred his life and cut up his already fragile soul.

But in the meantime, until they were both in Boston, "I'll keep the bed warm."

XXX

"So, later?" Wilson wanted to lean in and kiss him goodbye. The tiny apartment accommodated them well enough when it came to sex and intimacy. An open, public park less so. And Gregory didn't like public affection at all. Not even from him. Not even a goodbye peck.

Greg gave his customary almost not there smile. For all his fierce independence and cocky self-reliance, he was pleased. Wilson was warmed that Greg looked forward to seeing him at the end of every day.

One year ago, sitting on that bus stop bench, terrified by the unknown world he had been thrust into, Greg had come along and, as casually as you please, rescued him without so much as lifting a finger, or really doing anything but be himself. That was House all over. Snake charmer. Naturally Wilson had grasped at the offered hand with the desperation of a drowning man and though not all the waters had been smooth, the journey had been worth every grasp and claw. Greg was now everything.

Just as House had been.

"I love you." Wilson said it though he knew the younger man would cringe. Even though they would be seeing each other in four days.

"Do you have to say that?" Greg asked, but he looked happy.

"Yes. You won't say it back?"

Greg heaved a sigh and gathered up his back pack. "You know how I feel."

Yes, he did. Greg had all but admitted to him a short while ago that, yes, he had feelings for him now beyond the friendship and the physical. "I...sort of do." Was his circumventional confession. "I gave you the run of my apartment, didn't I?"

Wilson waved as Greg walked toward his bus stop. The bike wasn't a reliable enough mode of transport to take him and his duffle bag all the way to Boston. Two years fellowship under Doctor Alan Samuel Head of the Infectious Disease Department at Boston General (an impressive fellowship for someone barely out of medical school), the first and most important medical influence of his life. Some things were still the same.

Greg would come home weekends and spend them with him in Princeton until he could arrange his new ID's and become someone else. Anything for Greg - to be with him. Anything at all. Then he would move to Boston as well and they could set up in a small apartment somewhere. Then he could get back to doing what he loved, doctoring in some way, some where. He'd managed to save the two thousand dollars from tips at his two jobs.

And Wilson had just picked himself up a small Toyota compact for a thousand dollars and was getting around just fine. Greg had offered him the use of his Kawasaki which Wilson had adamantly declined. He would not had driven that thing around for all the cash in the state lottery.

Life here - he still had difficulty thinking of this strange place and time as his home - had settled into a pleasant routine with the best moments all having to do with his young doctor friend, Greg House. He was still a House through and through, pig-headed and rude, arrogant and argumentative. And also gentle and loving and passionate and endlessly surprising. Greg lacked the experience of the other House. (Wilson's mind drifted back to him. It was becoming harder and harder to picture that other House, the memories fading. Fewer and farther between). But the experience would come.

The young House, his House, Gregory, was a House he had also never really known. One who had lived before the years of work, the collective disdain of his colleagues (not a very clever disguise for their reluctant respect but seething jealousy of Greg's genius), the loneliness (or rather the loneliness of that House - this Greg House had him). This Greg was also gentle and loving and ardent. He didn't just joke to deflect, he laughed out loud and made love to Wilson with the uncontrolled power and energy of the young. This Greg still enjoyed life. Greg had him and he had Greg and it was weird, mixed up and stressful. It was sexy and angry and amazing.

A perfect love given in the only way a human can: imperfectly. It was marvelous.

Wilson shook his mind from his reverie and waved to Greg. He was nearing the bus stop, and just in time, too, because the express to Boston was coming up the street. When an old man stepped up to Greg and spoke to him, Wilson couldn't hear the conversation. For once, Greg didn't just brush the guy off. Wilson had tried to teach him, by example if nothing else, that sometimes it paid to give people the time of day. Even if the reward doesn't always appear right away or exactly what you expected. Each time Greg had listened politely for about ten seconds, then sighed with a roll of his eyes. Sometimes Wilson launched forth into some speech or other just to see Greg's reaction that reminded him so much of...

...Greg listened to the old guy. He had few seconds, the bus was almost there. Wilson shielded his eyes from the bright sunlight. It was the wrong express. This one didn't stop here but two blocks down.

The old man stepped out onto the street, in front of the speeding bus. Wilson watched...time slowed down...Greg the new physician and healer, leaped out to push the old man out of the way of the speeding vehicle. All fourteen tons of it.

Time came to a stop. It wasn't real of course, Wilson told himself.

Greg didn't just step onto the pavement to save someone as the bus reached that very spot, it's front bumper striking his strong, healthy legs, snapping both at the knee and slamming his upper body onto it's front chassis of aluminum and steel.

The bus then DIDN'T continue to advance as Gregory's skull struck the bus's wind-shield, caving in a two square foot section. Greg was then NOT violently flipped end over broken end and then run over by the still moving vehicle, his young body twisted and crumpled beneath the bus's bottom works as the driver, one quarter of a second after seeing the pedestrian, hit the brakes with all ten tires screaming.

Wilson then DIDN"T see the huge vehicle skid as the heavy rear engine, traveling with more momentum now than the front, began to swing the back end around, now pushing the bus forward at a forty degree angle, all the while grinding up the human being under it.

Wilson didn't see any of it because, for a few seconds, his mind refused to accept the vision of its own eyes. Time had frozen.

And then it began to thaw and everything in Wilson's world changed.

One moment his lovely Greg had been walking, waving, speaking, saving someone's life.

And the next he was a bloody, twisted lump wedged somewhere near the rear end of a bus, its tires still smoking, its engine idling quietly. A death roll executed in a quarter-instant of the clock.

Before he felt his feet move and his voice call out, Wilson, the physician and the healer, understood that Greg House was dead.

His heart was under the bus also, beating it's last, because it had nothing left to live for.

It was dead too.

XXXXX

IT'S AN UNFAIR WORLD

--

The ambulance had come, not to try and save a human struggling to live, but to salvage his remains.

Wilson sat on the sidewalk, his back up against the side of a police car, parked at an angle half off the road. The police had taken his statement as witness, written the information down from his single fake ID - his fake driver's license. Then they had removed the bloodstained wallet from the back pocket of the dead young man and, in a hurried hand, written that stuff down too. The bloodied wallet was dropped in a zip-lock and tossed into a plastic bin in the trunk of a police car.

The male officer peeled off the red-stained latex gloves with a snap and threw them in the garbage.

Now a woman police officer, whom Wilson was trying to ignore, was crouched down on her heels in front of him. She was asking him questions. Not the witness type questions, but the more personal:

Did you know him? Is he your son? Do you live near here? Can we give you a ride? Are YOU all right? Maybe you should go to the hospital too. Talk to someone? That often helps.

Wilson didn't attempt to stifle the mocking chuckle that rattled from his larynx. Police woman frowned but then she was used to such reactions. She'd attended two other traffic deaths already that week.

"Who was he?" She asked. "Where's his family?"

"I'm his family!" He snarled, with blood-red eyes in a white mask of grief, as the images rolled over and over his mind like a horror movie on continuous loop.

Wilson's anguished yelling, as he tried to reach beneath the bus to help Greg, had given way to shouts of denial when his hand and shirt sleeve came back soaked in warm blood. The shock of seeing it had driven all eighteen years of his time as a physician, all training, all experience and calm knowledge, from his mind. He became an animal deprived. A creature of instinct - fear, hate, flight and rage. All of them surged through his body at once, disbanding all sensible thought.

Wilson had beat the side of the bus, tiny taps on an uncaring dead weight, until his fist bled. He screamed until he was hoarse. Wilson took the driver staggering from the bus by his lapels and shook him, screaming over and over: "MovethebusmovethebusmovetheGODDAMNBUS!"

But the driver was in shock and bleeding from his head, his eyes wide and frightened.

Wilson slumped, moaning and blubbering like the insane. The man he loved above all else in the world was gone. The only one that would be, forever. And he couldn't reach him with even one finger. He, physician and healer, man of medicine and the occasional miracle, was prostrate. Useless.

Overcome by astronomic grief, he fell.

Until the whispering crowds and the drum-pounding sirens brought him around enough that he knew he was sitting up, something hard against his back.

Until the questions. All the fucking questions while no one thought to move the bus. They left Greg under there until the coroner arrived and did his measurements, detached and unhurried, for he had all the time in the world.

Until the driver, hands shaking like leaves in a wind (with the assistance of a concerned police officer), started the engine again and crept the bus forward until Greg's body was exposed. Then the only action they deemed necessary was to cover him with a stained yellow plastic sheet so other people would not have to look and feel sickened.

Wilson wanted to lie down with Greg, wrap himself around his cooling body, and kiss him. So Greg could rest easier. He would have wrapped him up and carried him to the coroners black wagon himself. Wilson wanted to ride with Greg to where ever they would take him. If they'd let him come anywhere near.

The ambulance, not needed after all, pulled away. Siren, quiet. Lights, dark. A clear signal of a wasted trip.

Life-saving ambulances are white; used to transport survivors to a nice comfortable place called a Hospital. Even the name meant "Guest house. Inn" A place for the living.

Coroners wagons are black; not used to transport, but to haul remains, left-overs and waste. To take them to the place for temporary storage. Morgue/Mortuary: originally "a sad expression. A solemn look."

Morgue.

It sounded like a last gurgle in a dying man's throat. Like a mourning groan from a lover's mouth.

Wilson wanted to be with Greg. To stop what was happening to him. To hold him and love him and protect him forever. He wanted to do all these things if they would let him. But he wasn't allowed to touch Greg at all.

"Any family, sir?" The police woman was asking again. "Are you a relative? A friend?"

Wilson finally looked at her with beaten eyes. Greg and I were in love, he wanted to say. We lived together. We laughed, ate, made love, argued and had a fucking great life just beginning. All new again and imperfect and so acutely wonderful.

So curse an all powerful God who could watch so much blood spill and not flick an eyelash. Goddamn to perdition an eternal Being would never understand the horror of watching his own death approach.

With dead eyes and voice coming from a distant place where nothing good would ever exist for him again, Wilson took a shuddering breath,

"I loved him."

XXX

Police woman, finished with her interviewing the secondary witnesses turned back to her primary. But her primary witness was nowhere to be found.

When the police woman's words had begun to filter through the barrier of his profound grief, Wilson had understood her words and knew it was time for him to go.

"My primary witness is a bit shaken up." She'd explained to her partner. "Claims he knew the dead guy." She said. Both cops were standing over by the yellow plastic hump on the pavement that used to be his Greg. "Yeah," Police woman continued in response to her partner's question which got lost in the surrounding white noise of voices, doors, sirens, milling people who had no idea that the dead man under the sheet was one of the world's most extraordinary persons. The most beloved by him. But to them Wilson was just the guy sitting by the police car weeping. The relative or the friend. They didn't know. Didn't care.

"Poor bastard." Police woman was still talking about him. "He only had his Driver's ID on him. We'll get the rest when we get him to a hospital." Her partner said something back and she answered, "Ambulance guys left already. I'll transport him myself, if you want to stay and finish up here?"

Her partner agreed and by that time, Wilson, loathing to leave Greg behind; forced to abandoned him; knowing he would never be able to arrange a funeral or attend a memorial, slipped away when Police woman still was otherwise occupied. It would have difficult explaining why he had no ID other than a driver's license - a fake one at that - which they would surely discover.

"Hey." The spot where Wilson had sat against the police car was empty. Only a spot of flattened grass revealed that a person had been there. Police woman looked around. No sign of the good looking man who, crying continuously, had insisted that the dead man had been his young lover. Police woman put her hands on her hips and issued a All Points Bulletin to find him and bring him in. Her Sergeant was going to be annoyed.

Zombie-like, Wilson walked back to their apartment. His and Greg's. Escape was on his mind. Greg was on his mind more. Lovely Greg whom he would never see again, or touch or kiss or make love to. He returned to the apartment because he didn't know what to do. His shift at Carl's started at five. His car he had left back at the scene of the accident since he could hardly have made an escape in it with the police watching his every move. His other job...he couldn't remember when his next shift started there, or exactly where the place was located. There was hardly a point to any of it.

Nothing mattered.

Wilson opened the squeaky door and stood in the middle of their tiny apartment, which seemed huge and empty without him. Wilson lay down on the single bed and tried to find Greg's scent on the pillows. Wilson cursed himself for having been so fastidious with the washing that he'd laundered all the dirty clothes and sheets the day before and put fresh pillow-cases and sheets on the bed that morning. The unwanted odor of Downey rose from the fabric as he lay down.

Even Greg's guitar wasn't there. Greg had dropped it off at a repair shop to get new strings and keys installed. Wilson couldn't remember which one. It hadn't seemed important at the time to know that.

He could not stop the new tears as he lay there wishing for death. If Greg was gone, if there was to be no Greg, no House, anywhere in life for him, what was there to live for?

Zero. Not a thing.

Wilson drifted off into exhausted sleep. Let the police come for him, he didn't care. Let them think him insane, he wouldn't worry about it anymore. Let them discover he was no one and nothing because, after all, he was.

He had nothing, he _was_ nothing because he no longer had Greg, who had been his everything and his all.

_Greg, baby,...I love you. I will always love you_... What the hell else was there...?

Wilson could think of nothing...

...nothing...

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

That was a 10  
--

A siren, or a car alarm,...a beeping? Wilson's head ached terribly. Someone was hitting him on the head with a hammer. Someone was nearby.

The beeping,...was familiar. Vitals monitor; heart, O2 levels, BP, regulating I.V drips,...he felt needles stuck into the back of both hands. Two lines. Fluid replacement maybe. Liquid nutrients.

Hard mattress. Sponge pillow, the smell of antiseptic and sickness. Hospital bed. Recovery room?

Hospital. Where the living are brought to receive hospitality; to acquire well-ness again with their loved ones around them.

Wilson opened his eyes to the light of a room's large window.

And to his face.

No, not the young, smooth one.

"Hey buddy." The mouth opened and was speaking. "You still with me?"

Wilson answered, knowing it was an illusion created from his mind's overwhelming grief. "No." He mumbled.

"Mmh." A hand lifted each of his eyelids in turn and shone a bright light over them. "Pupils are good. No permanent brain injury we think, you idiot."

_That_ was familiar.

A head and face came together before his aching temple and tired eyes.

Greg...House. House. The other. The older. His House but not _his_. The one he had known, - god - how long ago now? Year? Two?

"Greg?" Wilson asked the face who could not actually _be_ him, but it was such an nice illusion or hallucination or what-ever-the hell. Death wasn't so bad.

""Greg"?" Illusion House asked. "Now I know you _must_ have been brain injured. You _idiot_."

Wilson was getting annoyed with the insult. "'M not."

"You stepped in front of a _bus_! So you're an idiot."

_So did you_. That penetrating agony of shock and pain as he stood there, frozen, while Greg's body was flipped and split open, bones snapped asunder, finally coming to rest in a growing stain of his own blood, was a sight more horrifying than all the disintegrating cancer patients he'd treated (and watched die) put together and then some. That final image would never leave his mind. He knew that. It was indisputable fact.

The explosion of ache it had caused in his heart-turned-to-stone and severed soul would demand it's special corner of existence inside him forever. And so he could not take his eyes off this man for even a lonely breath of time. House, here in this room, in this time with his face looking down, warm and flushed with life - Wilson had to mentally pinch himself over and over to know it was real.

"You idiot. Witnesses said you acted like you didn't even see it."

Wilson wasn't too pleased with this hallucination. It was too..._House _for this to be heaven. God had a rotten sense of humor. Wilson shook his head to dispel the irritating illusion that kept calling him names, so he could go back...wherever, and find to a nice quiet, peaceful place to be dead.

"Stop moving! You've got a concussion and a cracked skull - you _want_ to go back into surgery?"

At least it didn't say idiot. "Tired." Wilson managed and the illusion's expression softened. Genuine worry and concern crossed it's worn, handsome features.

"Go to sleep. I'll see you tomorrow."

Wilson nodded slightly and felt himself slipping back into slumber. He wouldn't mind talking to the illusion again, even if it insulted him all the time. Beat the hell out of being alone.

XXX

Wilson awoke to voices and a person sitting by his bedside. The hallucination kept insisting on plunking him in this uncomfortable hospital bed and torturing him with the face and voice - and smell - of Gregory House.

God had a nasty streak of sadomasochism in him too.

"Finally." Illusion/Gregory House said as Wilson opened his eyes. Sun shone through the window. He felt...better.

And the man he knew and had known as Gregory House was still there. Sitting beside him, looking at him with those older, lined, features surrounding the same brilliantly blue but worried eyes. Wilson decided to venture a little farther into this nice hallucination. "House?"

House crossed his arms, sighed. "Good to hear you talking."

The voice was perfect. The face was as marvelous as Greg's. Wilson's heart ached. He wanted this House to be real. Wilson reached out and touched the nearest arm belonging to the Greg/house/Illusion. It felt real. Warm and living.

Wilson stared with sleepy, new sight, his own eyes exploring those lined and tired features. The handsome map of House's face was so familiar and eerily, as Wilson traversed each valley and hill, also a stranger's land.

House's irises, half circles gouged out beneath them the color of charcoal, were still as blue as the moon's halo on a foggy night. The white's, though, were shot through with blood worms from many sleepless nights. Laugh, frown and stress cracks all present and accounted for. Perhaps a few new ones.

Wilson thought it possibly the most beautiful sight in all earth and heaven.

House, surprised by the unexpected touch, returned the gesture and lay the back of his left hand against Wilson's forehead. "No fever."

Wilson decided to test the illusion out a little further, being careful not to allow hope to rise too near the surface. "How long was I gone?"

"You were unconscious for nineteen days." House leaned a bit closer, over Wilson's face, looking hard into his eyes. "Scared the shit out of me."

"Well,..." Wilson said wearily, "Now you know how it feels."

All the near-death incidents, the infarction, the gun-shots - nothing House could have prevented. But the knife, the possibly deadly tainted blood,...all self-initiated death risks for hardly a sufficient reason. House stared at his best friend Wilson who he had become convinced, after the fourteenth or fifteenth day, would not wake up. He'd made Cuddy's life hell. He'd cried alone in his apartment when he had accepted that Wilson was lost. This man who he loved more than anyone in the world. Loved dearly. Completely. House set his lips, nodded.

It was as House-ish an apology as Wilson had ever witnessed. "Jeezz..." He whispered. "You're...I don't think you're...an illusion."

"No, I'm no illusion." House took Wilson's limp hand and squeezed his fingers. "Real. See?"

Wilson nodded, just a little, his head was killing him. One more question. "Did you ever own a Kawasaki?"

Weird question, House's face said. His mouth said, "No."

"Didn't think so." Wilson said. "I love your face." He added, but with words slurred from his nineteen day sleep that had carried him too far down for the comfort of those who cared. It had almost cost him his life. That had cost the life of...the one who...had not actually existed. But who he loved none-the-less. _This_ man before him. This irreplaceable man.

House frowned and Wilson saw the concern again. "I'm okay, House." The name felt good on his lips. Trying it on for shape, Wilson said it again silently, wrapping his mouth around it a few times.

"Get some sleep, Wilson - but not _too_ much." House turned to leave the room; give his friend some peace.

"House." Wilson called.

House turned back. "Yeah?"

"I'll see you tomorrow."

Wilson watched his friend and former lover leave the room. He lay there and thought a lot over Gregory House. Both of them. Wilson had thought he knew Greg House. Yes, he'd presumed he'd known all there was to know of Doctor Gregory House, Diagnostician and best friend. For thirteen years, he'd thought he'd known. He would now be behooved to remind himself that thirteen years was only a quarter of House's time on the planet. And ten years less than his beloved Greg -- whomever he had been. In his head, heart or coma, the love he felt for him, the grief too, was still fresh.

A lot can happen in three decades or so. A lot can happen in nineteen days, too, he was quickly learning. A shit load of _happen_ he had not been privy to.

That other House, Greg, his far away lover and friend once visited, was confined to two possible's now. He had either been real, and therefore now buried twenty-five years, or he had been a dream. An intense, wonderful, horrible dream.

Either way, it didn't matter anymore.

Greg House lived. He loved House. Easy numbers. Wilson treasured House's heart and mind, imperfectly gentle things. Cherished the man's heart, so imbedded in flawed affection. Every warped shape of his being was, Wilson realized, rich and irreplaceable. As all are.

XXX

The next day House returned, entering the room eating a bowl of cereal. A favorite snack of his, Wilson remembered. Greg had never touched the stuff.

Delightful to hear the crunching so close to his ear. "Enjoying your cereal?"

House nodded. "Cuddy canceled that lecture by the way."

_Oh, yeah. THAT thing._ In the interim of being sort of dead and sort of not, and having an unforgettable sexual affair with some-House-or-other but sort of not, the lecture had slipped his hallucinating - but sort of not - mind. Wilson felt relieved for House though. "Why?"

House swallowed and took another heaping mouthful before he answered. "Something about the lecturer threatening to show up naked or something. Can't really remember because of her immediate white flag waving. I think it was her bra." He chewed happily. "She didn't want to share such a beautiful sight with the outside world is my take on it."

_Insert joke here,_ Wilson thought. House would like that. "Yes, and we're all emotionally poorer for it." _But I remember the sight and what a delightful sight it is._

House chuckled and chewed, laughed with Wilson. _Things couldn't get any better than this_.

Wilson reached for House's hand and, unsurprisingly (at least to Wilson), House allowed it. Wilson delighted in the customary stiffness of House's willing but dismayed fingers. _Ah, there is that House-styled concern, _he thought, _so terribly desperate not to be noticed_. Wilson saw himself reflected in the tiny blacks of House's pupils. Not often had he been this close to him. Not this one.

Wilson's eyes finally gave up the water in them. He didn't worry if he cried in front of House (as he used to worry). He gripped House's hand harder to assure himself there was nothing to cry about. Nothing bad was present.

House looked very concerned now. "Are you - ?"

Wilson shook his head a little so House did not have to finish the words.

Wilson smiled - just a crack - and closed his eyes. Sleep was coming again. A living House sat beside him so sleep might arrive unabated and he could safely go down for a while and come back and House would still be there and be fully real and life-charged, looking at him in his annoyed House-ian way. He'd probably make a sarcastic joke at his expense. It would be nothing if not music. Perfect tunes to live by, Wilson decided. Symphony House. That was more than Wilson had bargained with God for when he watched Greg die.

God came through in the end. But the price had been unconscionable.

Wilson still didn't know what had happened exactly. Frustration at House - this House - and a crazy old man's creepy and ultimately meaningless words, plus hatred of city transit buses plus anger at himself plus...did he _really_ step in front a bus?

Well, he _really_ had a fractured skull. That could lead to bleeding into the meninges, causing pressure build, perhaps inducing misfiring or irregular firing of the synaptic nerves, resulting in long unconscious state with extremely vivid hallucination-nightmare-fantasy.

_Good theory._ That plus...

...he loved Greg House, his friend. More now than ever. He'd probably been lying in this bed the whole time, while his brain played scary, wonderful, cruel, horrible jokes on him. He'd probably taken House, in a virtual sense, down into the nightmare with him. And House (so very like himself), had transformed into young, vibrant, energetic, sexy Greg and that just maybe saved his sanity. Maybe saved _him_.

_Equally good theory._

But having House back and being back with House was real. He was sure. _Pretty_ sure. House was equal compensation to Greg. House _was_ Greg, and the comparison was even, and just as beautiful from either view. A priceless reward. He could not measure it. "House..." Wilson said.

House's worry came alive in three syllables, "Yeah, Buddy?" House was still holding Wilson's hand.

_Buddy._ Wilson could feel the concern in House's sweating, shaking fingers. He couldn't wait to later tease House about _that!_

But he was tired now and squeezed House's hand tightly once more before sleep brought down the lights.

"...I love you too."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The End

Sequel: Forwards, Backwards and Somehow Else.

XXX


End file.
